Slashdot Mirror
Steve Jobs Dead At 56
SoCalChris writes "Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
RIP. He was a visionary.
Sent from my iPhone
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
Bill Gates put a computer on every desk. Steve Jobs put one in every pocket, purse, dorm room and bedroom.
His contribution will be sorely missed.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Thank you for giving people something to be smug about, no matter what side of the argument they are on.
... wait, what?
If you haven't already, filter through http://folklore.org/ , his antics at the beginning of Apple are hilarious.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
RIP, Steve. Love or hate you, you definitely made a huge impact on the tech industry.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
While I'm not a fan of Apple's business practices, Steve made a lot of advances in technology. RIP.
:(
Gone!
The iKing is dead. Long live the iKing! Hail Steve Jobs!
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Also, if CmdrTaco's trend continues, tomorrow will be a very bad day for him.
... RIP. Not a fanboi, but a great contribution.
He brought user friendliness, usability concepts to top of the pile, and caused computer technology to go for more style, but what he did with locking in his customers, limiting their freedoms and then making enormous profits over these, has caused almost all other companies to follow the same style. now every company, even google, is trying to lock in people to things so that they can cash-cow them. imagine how internet would be if it was limited to 10-15 companies and their app stores, estores, media stores etc from the start.
...
unfortunately, due to what he did, this is the direction the movers and shakers of the information technology are taking.
talk about the openness, freedom of apple at the starting stages, and talk about after jobs. i wonder if the other steve can turn things around and make apple more in line with the spirit of information technology freedom and progress again
Read radical news here
At times like this it is best to remember the good contributions from a man who provided so much to our industry. Thank you Steve wherever you are now
The answer to all your problems
i wasnt a fan of his, especially later on in life, however no one can argue his contribution to society and the tech industry specifically, you will be missed steve. RIP
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You may disagree with his ideologies, but you have to admit that he changed the world we live in. Allow me to hold up my glass and tip my hat to a man to made the world just a little bit better.
I didn't know you, and I was never lucky enough to get an email reply from you, but you changed my world and made it a better place. I'll miss you, Steve.
..fondly by some, but here I can't say for sure.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
jk...I'm not a big fan of his company, but RIP.
I haven't been a Mac zealot in years. I switched to Linux quite some time ago. But the fact remains that large portions of my life, online and off, would be very different if not for this man. Rest in peace.
Some inspirational speeches
"Focus is not about saying Yes, but about saying No"
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-1997-video-2011-6
Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
âoeThis was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and thatâ(TM)s what I had.â ...Steve Jobs, at home in 1982.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pacman3000/4042368287/
It is regrettable that Steve Jobs has died. He was remarkable person to meet in person as well as experience through the media. I expect that much will be written about him the days ahead. However, there is no doubt he changed the world as we know it. Like him or not, he could not be ignored or underestimated. Take Care and be well!
The IPhone 4S announcement must have hit him really hard.
but I'm close to tears, very sad day for the technology world.
I'm not a fan of Apple, but there's no denying Jobs was one of the greatest legends of the IT era. RIP Steve, far too young.
Considering he's been battling this cancer for years...I'm gonna have to say that yeah, he saw it coming.
What a bummer... Steve was one of the few people who inspired me to be as crazy as I have been over the years.
It's weird to have chills after hearing the news. As an ex-Apple employee, I hope that the engineering culture he created continues to live on.
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
====
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --George Bernard Shaw
====
Goodbye Steve, and thanks for everything. Even the stuff I hated.
Go somewhere random
Thank you for inspiring millions and helping make some really cool dreams into realities.
Holy cow... have you looked at the Firehose and counted the submissions?
Interesting how many submit a blank story with nothing but a few words without checking for pretty obvious dupes.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
His style was always innovative and changing.
http://www.iphonelife.com/sites/iphonelife.com/files/Apple-CEO-Steve-Jobs-Keynote-Fashion-Evolution.jpg?1314655114
RIP Mr. Jobs
Yeah, it's poetically awesome that the summary is just the good old Steve is dead troll. RIP Steve, we will miss you. (typed on an Apple keyboard attached to an MBP)
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Old versions of Mac OS (back when it was called "System " had a little 16x16x1 icon of Steve Jobs. The story on folklore.org is here.
I hope they leave in in, or put it back in the ROMs, from now on. Come on, guys, 32 bytes.
At long last...Jobs is in the Cloud.
And thus spoketh the Lord to Mr. Jobs, "here dost thine golden ipad".
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
cant help but wonder how long ago he died and if they wanted to wait till after the iphone 4s announcement?
Like many I've certainly never been a member of his fan club and I'm not a fan of Apple, but you've got to admit, the guy was good at what he did and it's a real loss. My thoughts are with his friends and family.
While I feel it was Steve Jobs who really created to home computer revolution and I feel sad at his death, I'm angry that now I have to sit through a bunch of incorrect tributes on TV. CNN already implied he invented the mouse (that was Doug Englebart). Next they will say he invented the gui. *sigh*.
CNN also just said his "greatest invention" was the ipad. First, he didn't "invent" it, secondly... his GREATEST contribution? Come on.
We will miss him, though, even if he did go from being one of the best promoters of computer hobbyist culture to one of the most proprietary loving bastards on the planet...
I can't think of a better description of the man. He very much was an American Icon, and he is very much dead now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
'Nuff Said.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Damn it all
Seriously.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Truly a visionary. Nice guy, passionate about tech, brutal at business.
RIP. We will miss you Mr. Jobs. This.... is his ultimate game changer--cause this event will surely change "the game".
R.I.P :(
Steve Jobs,
February 24, 1955 to October 5, 2011.
Shit. I honestly did not see that coming, despite all we knew... Like Michael Jackson of the software world :-(
I'll be honest. I've never been a fan of Apple products, But I have and will always be a fan of Steve Jobs.
The man was truly one of the last great manager's and CEO's of American Business. Competitive to the end, Dedicated to the end, and capable of pushing people to their absolute limits for better or for worse to the point that something insanely great gets produced.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Impressive. Only Steve Jobs could pull off the final "One More Thing" after the most recent Apple announcements. It was as timely as could be, and it's sad to see a true visionary go.
He brought an artistic sense to the usually boxy engineering and computer world, and aethetics can make a big difference.
Good on you Steve. Thanks for giving as much as you did.
It makes it sound like a homicide. Fix it, please.
My userid is prime!
Now who's gonna remind the industry that user experience comes first?
Google? Your personal information comes first.
Microsoft? Derp derp derp first.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
wow talk about passive aggressive comment. Geesh. Even now you give an asshole comment.
What have you achieved in your pathetic life....
Everything builds on everything else. He was instrumental in the Apple II, and that was, no matter what anybody may say, a titanic shift in the manufacture, marketing and public perception of the computer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
His greatest invention but doesn't get enough press.
there be noone to copy from, but let there be noone that seeks to profit from limiting freedom.
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-Steve Jobs
Can we have Woz back in charge now?
Evil people are out to get you.
Let me guess, you had to wait for all those little voting people to click the plus sign on your stupid firehose before you could, you know, post probably the biggest tech-related story of the week, or the month for that matter.
Pathetic, Slashdot, absolutely pathetic. I mean, you let a stupid autism story get posted before the Steve Job's story.
At any rate, whatever you may have thought of his motives, the tech world has lost one of its towering figures. Condolences to his family.
Slashdot has never been and will never be about breaking news as quickly as possible. The value of Slashdot is the community. Your criticism has absolutely zero bearing on anything meaningful.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
The immediate cause of death wasn't made clear, but this is immensely sad news for me. I have a friend who has recently been diagnosed with the same type of (rare) pancreatic cancer. Jobs' version of the cancer is supposed to be more treatable, and he wouldn't have lived as long as he did had he the more common, deadly form. I had hoped that he would survive longer.
That's factually wrong, and flamebait. Stop it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You will be sorely missed.
Come on people! We may not all agree with the man and like "his" closed systems or his company, but if it wouldn't have been for him (and Woz) the (tech)world would be a different place today! He was a man with a vision with which he stuck to until the end. Rest in peace Steve Jobs, you will always be rememberd as an entrepreneur and one of the most important person in the tech industry!
In a world without fences and walls, who needs gates and windows?
My God.... get over it. It is a Slashdot downmod. If something that small gets to you, I'd hate to see how you manage IRL.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I came to Slashdot specifically to read about it because I wanted to among friends that would pay their respect to Jobs from the point of view of geeks/nerds. So, yea I think this is exactly what Slashdot is here for and I would have felt an emptiness had it not been here. I am all broken up about his passing. No, I didn't know him personally, but I do want pay may respect to his obvious contributions to our lives and our community.
Will he be buried in a black turtleneck and jeans?
Thanks for it all. You will be missed and remembered. Blessings to your family.
I never post on slashdot, but just had to for this article. Wow! Can't believe it. What an amazing person! I guess i'll never get to feel his energy. I always wanted to see him give a live presentation. I'm a Linux guy. Not a big apple fanboy, but I had the utmost respect for Steve Jobs! He revolutionized so many things. I knew he was in bad health, but I am still so shocked! Steve you were awesome! RIP
I'm seeing nothing in any story including the CNN one linked to that says he was "found dead in his home this morning". Seems dubious.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
He certainly made innovation something that business strives for these days instead of being just one of the crowd! Thanks for your efforts Steve!
http://www.gibby.net.au
âZ"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
I wish I was more in tune with his philosophy earlier on in life. When I was a teenager, I really could've fucking used it.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Love or hate him, you have to admit that Jobs knew how to make tech cool, and just for that he deserves respect. My parents were visiting last spring and I took my mother shopping. While we were in the mall we stopped at the Apple store and started playing with the iPad. She had a lot of fun with it. The point is that Jobs had the capability to understand what needed to be done to make tech easy to use and accessible. In that way, he was a genius.
Unfortunately, we are going to see his company, Apple, stagnate and become just another tech company without him at the helm.
Well, somebody had to ask.
Interesting that none of the comments so far mention Woz.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Flamebait, perhaps. But not factually wrong. Steve Jobs was a brilliant salesman, perhaps one of the best the world has ever seen. But he reaps a ton of credit for technology he didn't create. Some of it is technology even Apple didn't create. His true genius and achievements were marketing, not tech.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
A small reminder that no amount of wealth or power can overcome our mortality. RIP Mr. Jobs.
Better known as 318230.
I never met him in person, but for a while my company leased space in an Apple-owned building on Valley Green Drive, and Steve would frequently walk past my window on the sidewalk on his way back and forth from HQ to various buildings on VGD (which tended to have all the windows covered up or painted black). He would just be walking alone without any entourage or anything, at a time when Carly was running HP and seemingly couldn't leave her office without press followers, support staff, security detail with automatic weapons, and a helicopter.
I can't imagine how much different (and for the worse) the history of the last thirty years of computing would have been without him.
He will be greatly missed by friends and foes alike.
G.
Steve saw the future of computers from the mouse/windows concept those guys at Xerox PARC developed. He pushed to bring that kind of IO into the markets beginning with LISA. It bombed but he still had the vision so Steve wouldn't give up and brought out the Mac. Say what you want (many called him a AH) but like other visionaries they don't care what others think (good thing he didn't do a market survey of what computers should be, i.e. if Henry Ford did one, people would ask for a faster horse). If not for Steve (and others working 24/7/365) the IO many of us use on computers will probably still sitting in some building at an unknown address in Palo Alto. Then there's the iphone, etc....
I could not help but noticed the tagline on bottom of /. "Man's reach must exceed his grasp, for why else the heavens?"
mfwright@batnet.com
RIP Steve. I'll wear a black turtle neck tomorrow for you.
And here is today's lesson, kids: if you find you have cancer, do what your doctor tells you to right away, and don't waste time with alternative medicine bullshit.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Wow, what a sad day for the industry. I guess this shouldn't come as a big surprise since we've been hearing about his health for some time now.
I also know it's been said many times, but Steve Job was truly visionary. The last decade, and particularly since the iPad has been released, have been tremendous in terms of the amount of influence he has made (though that's been the case most of his career at Apple). Over the past few years, I slowly started picking up Apple technology. As a long term PC guy this was a tough thing to do and in hindsight, I wish I'd started earlier! I hope his legacy lives on. One can only wonder how the face of computing would have changed if he had another 10 years.
Here I am typing this on my first ever Macbook Pro. I haven't logged in for a few years here on /. but thought this story was worthy of a post. Way to go Steve, Rest in Peace!
...the tech world we all love wouldn't be the same without him. As a medical professional, I feared his time was near when he stepped down. It was painfully easy to tell his life was Apple and the one thing to separate him from there would be the end of it. Set aside his achievements in the tech industry, he was an amazing business man. People in his company feared, some hated him at one point or another, but despite his tyrannical reputation at Apple, he was right. He had a number of visions that took a company from one mission to another and it was for the better. While I'm a Windows guy, I do have an iPhone and it's changed my day to day life as far as getting stuff done. RIP Steve, condolences to his family.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Damn, no more obituaries about Graham Dilley today. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8809427/Graham-Dilley.html
Tomorrow morning, all iPhones, iPod Touches, and Macbooks will wake up their owners to a video montage tribute to Steve Jobs, built into the firmware for years, activated remotely from Apple HQ in Cupertino.
He worked his ass of until the end.. I'm sure he was asking yesterday how the iPhone 4S unveiling went while laid up in bed... RIP Mr. Jobs.
Well-played Subby!
Are Stephen King and Alan Thicke still OK?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
He very much was an American Icon, and he is very much dead now.
Wouldn't "and he has been dragged to the Trash" be a little more appropriate?
Blank until
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that a moment of gloating amounted to pathological obsession. I am over it; that doesn't mean I can't ever remember it or be amused that I was right.
""Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead in his Cupertino home this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him — even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.""
Bet he doesn't have an app for *that* !!
Rest Peacefully Steve! You did good
A true visionary.
Call me a romantic if you want. But this, for nerds, the nerdiest of the nerds, the graybeards that remember 'back in the day', guys that's "been there, done that", the guys that still are or have been part of the this is like John F Kennedy dying.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
It was a pleasure to work for you...
Steve Jobs Macintosh Launch Video (1984)
My condolences to his family.
He died waiting for the iPhone 5.
Steve Jobs championed the notion that WE come first. His approach was karmic: if I build a thing that is good for you, then you will buy it from me. It's that simple. He didn't make billions selling your personal info to advertisers. He didn't make billions engaging in anti-competitive practices. He just made great stuff.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I'd thank him for the memories. I've owned or used nearly every Apple computer ever made, even the shitty ones in the Dark ages. I hope Apple can continue to be the sort of company it is right now.
NOT! Sad he died, but anyone who saw him in the last few months could read the handwriting on the wall. Prayers to the family, but I'm sure there are more than a few current & former workers that might be glad he's gone. They say he wasn't the nicest guy to work for.
im here not for news, but what people will say about news.
Read radical news here
I did some consulting for Apple, but never met Steve.
I have to say, that he affected my life more profoundly than any other person I never met.
RIP Steve.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
How many people would you classify as "superficial"? According to sales numbers, it would have to be, roughly, a fuck-load. Either all of those people are superficial, or maybe the appeal wasn't just to superficial people. Maybe non-superficial people also found value in Apple's products. Wouldn't you think that, if the products really weren't that good, those superficial people wouldn't tell their superficial friends and relatives about them? Being superficial, wouldn't they drop Apple products for the next "shiny"? Is that happening? If not, why not?
And if that was all he did, why couldn't anyone else do it? Superficial people are easily swayed, right?
RIP Steve. From the Apple II that I had as my first computer to the iPhone I carry in my pocket, you transformed the industry more times than most of the big players took part in it, and I don't doubt that you inspired much of what has put me on the career path I'm on today. Thank you, and may flights of iPods sing thee to thy rest.
While I feel it was Steve Jobs who really created to home computer revolution
in an alternate earth you mean.
Read radical news here
Untrue. Actually, that was the official excuse why Slashdot refused to warn people that the Slashdot Effect was headed their way or obtain permission for any kind of mirroring, back when Slashdot was powerful enough to knock a website offline and run up huge bandwidth bills. It was because they couldn't possibly delay a story, no matter how trivial.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
text on the TextEdit app icon on every Mac OS X installation :D.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
of Pirates of Silicon Valley that will be pirated tonight.
Heh, I figured it was true when I went into the firehose and saw it duped 10 times. The "news feed" on slashdot has never ever been a place for up to date news. Actually this article has been posted in record time.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Ding Dong the Witch is dead! in other news, Bill Gates just got a haircut according to twitter! Which is definitely more important
I was ten years old. After wearing out a Timex Sinclair 1000 and a VIC-20, my dad took me to the computer shop to pick out a new one. They all looked cool and incredibly complex - the TI/99 with it's bizarre cartridge slot, the Apple II with it's strange ribbon cables coming out of the back (sorry Woz) the Atari 400 with it's horrid keyboard, the clunky PC with it's austere green display.
Then there was the Macintosh. It made the other machines look like junk. It had real fonts. It had *graphics*. It could make sounds other than a harsh piezoelectric bleep. You looked at it and could figure out how to get something done. My dad saved up and pulled a deal from a friend, and my early Christmas (and birthday and second Christmas) present that year was a shiny new beige Macintosh 512K with a wide-carriage Imagewriter and external floppy drive. Using it felt like you were using something from Star Trek. I learned how to touch type doing papers on that thing. I learned how to program using Microsoft Basic, then Metrowerks Pascal. I took it to Heathkit and had it upgraded to a 512KE with an enormous 800k drive. While there I drooled over the completely maxed-out Mac II with color ImageWriter II, LaserWriter II, dual 1.44MB floppies, a stack of SCSI drives (40MB HD, tape backup, and CD-ROM) and every desk accessory known to man loaded and ready to go. I finally retired it when I got a job out of high school and saved up enough to buy a PowerMac 6100/60, which I still have, and still works. Since then I've gotten into DIY, building my own PC compatables to experiment with Windows, Linux, Inferno, BeOS, and OS/2. Then I needed a PC at home to run all the development environments I had to learn for work. But I still have a soft spot for the elegance and simplicity of Mac hardware and software.
Thanks, Jobs, for pushing computer design forward on all fronts - from UI design to standardizing iconography used for ports, and forcing everyone else to at least attempt to be as innovative. I think, for my next computer, I'm retiring the water cooled behemoth running Windows 7 under my desk, and buying a Macbook Air.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Cool thing about it is, after a while, it sticks.
I may be diametrically opposed to your model but your contributions to technology and even culture (yeah, I said it) cannot be denied. Geek culture and culture*.*
/dev/null in the sky.
Love him or hate him...love or hate his company...love or hate their products, but, his truly visionary status cannot be disputed.
Enjoy your rest in the big
Jobs made life better for millions of people. The world was inarguably a better place for his having lived. What higher praise could there be than that?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Let it become permanent record that I turned to this website as soon as I found out by word-of-mouth. Looking forward to people's thoughtful comments here. Very sad day.
"I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him"
No, not really. I haven't used an Apple computer in... about 20 years now. The first time my family got an IBM clone to replace the old Apple 2c(?) i was amazed by how much more i could do with it and never looked back. Yeah, he did some "great" things, but nothing he's done has had a direct impact me in a long time and most of the indirect impact over the last few years has been to aggravate me (misleading commercials, bogus patent lawsuits, etc.)
I never wished the man ill (well, not seriously anyways) and it's always a tragedy when any human being dies, but about 150,000 people die every day and almost every one of those deaths is a tragedy for someone. Jobs had a lot of fans who are upset by this, the same way that i'd be upset if one of my personal cultural heroes died, but Steve Jobs didn't mean a great deal to me one way or the other.
It's quite possible i'll get modded as a troll for saying so, but i just thought i'd point out that not everyone has been directly affected by Steve Jobs or feels a personal connection to him, so not everyone in the community will miss him.
RIP to all 150,000 or so people who died today, Steve Jobs no more or less than any of the others, even if i don't know those others by name.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
disturbing, annoying, but unfortunately. true. i wish, it wasnt true.
Read radical news here
I've noticed several posts mention Xerox PARC as the creators of the GUI.
That is absolutely true, but it took a visionary like Steve Jobs to figure out that such a technology could revolutionize computing. PARC and Jobs were BOTH essential vessels. After seeing the technology, Apple bought the rights to the mouse interface from Xerox, and introduced the Mac.
Xerox never saw the vast impact their technology could have. Where would we be now if Xerox had just sat on or canceled that project?
You brought is the Apple and Macintosh line of computers. You gave us digital downloads and iPods. Then you showed us iPhones and iPods to stay connected. We owe much of your day to day lives to visionaries such as yourself. I started programming on a C-64 and Apple IIe. My first professional computer was a Mac IIfx. I am raising my glass to you.
SillyKing
Saddened to hear this.
I see kids playing with iPads and iPhones and it's easy for them, they just know how to use the stuff immediately, just the way Steve Paul Jandali Simpson Jobs imagined people would interact with these tools.
RIP
You can't handle the truth.
"More than one pundit [...] called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci." Quite agree.
Yes, that's what I meant. You came here to pay respect, so I'd expect a respectful headline, not the old and lame 'found dead at his apartment' troll meme. If it's some kind of nerd humor, then I don't get it.
...he's a Buddhist.
I know you're already going to get dragged over the coals for this, and you're probably trolling Slashdot somewhat, but seriously. That's a pretty shitty--and ignorant--position to take: All technology is built off the shoulders of giants. Innovation is usually a process of small steps on uncharted terrain, and very seldom giant leaps over mountains.
I'm no fan of Apple; I don't own any Apple products. But you know what? I bought my mum an iPod Touch precisely because she wanted something to carry around to play her music that would be easy for her to use, and frankly, some of Apple's offerings are far better than anything anyone else offers. Yes, Apple has smug fanboys and fangirls, but given the success of their mobile devices, Apple--thanks to Jobs--managed to do something no one else has yet. Indeed, I think that the success of Android can thank Apple for breaking new ground and the related paradigm shift that brought the appeal of smart phones to the masses.
The world has truly lost a visionary. Perhaps the saddest commentary on this, though, is that everyone including many here had been expecting--almost begging--for a big announcement from Apple yesterday. I guess they got what they were asking for today, and that's what's damn sad.
He who has no
I don't know what Jobs actually knew about engineering or software design, but I could certainly see that Apple was good when he was involved with the company and pretty awful when he wasn't.
Maybe he was all flash (pun intended), or maybe he knew more than he had diplomas for, or maybe he just had the right managerial stuff. Whatever it was, genius or flourish, it's obviously not given out as readily as are MBA's.
The living can talk about loving or hating or even respecting those no longer with us, but, at the end, one would hope (and it seems very likely) that a life well-lived is its own reward.
RIP -- truly a visionary of the finest kind.
I'm sorry, which side of the field are you on?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The grassroots community will miss him? How so? Jobs and Apple have been crapping on the grassroots community for years.
Anyone else find the summary wording "found dead", a little disrespectful, or is it just me being over sensitive?
You will are already missed.
Flamebait, perhaps. But not factually wrong. Steve Jobs was a brilliant salesman, perhaps one of the best the world has ever seen. But he reaps a ton of credit for technology he didn't create. Some of it is technology even Apple didn't create. His true genius and achievements were marketing, not tech.
Xerox PARC deserves some credit, sure. But there's a reason people are using Apple-produced Macs (or Windows-based PC's) and not Xerox whatevers. That reason is, Xerox were idiots. They were so focused on making dittos they forgot about the future. Apple and Microsoft were all about the future (because, as I recall, the present sucked). My first foray into a windowed operating system didn't come from either of them, but they both got it right in my estimation. Apple needs to get on the horse and innovate some more as far as a desktop goes, though. OSX in its many iterations is getting long in the tooth. Windows XP, its contemporary, would be on service pack 7 by now. In Mac Land, service pack 7 is called Lion.
I am not sure what there is to be "angry" about, perhaps that is why people told you to "calm down".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
A great American put that in my home. Remember that, and do your best to avoid buying from China.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
Apple is currently the only company designing products according to Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design. Go and read them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Rams#Rams.27_ten_principles_to_.22good_design.22
Steve Jobs seemed to be the only man who understood how important this is (except the consumer obviously, who reacted to the design by buying metric-shit-loads of product). Apple products are not 'shiny' or 'flashy' - they are the opposite.
Wow. Sad news. I hope there's a young visionary like Jobs that will impact the world my kids inherit.
Sadly I heard about it first on facebook, rather than here. Steve Jobs has shaped our world without his vision there would have been no apple and ...
Condolences to his family he is irreplaceable, now there is just faceless corporations designing hardware to make a profit and no real leadership to make it great.
Steve jobs was a catalyst and without him the future just got further away.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Rest in Peace Steve.
If I was a worse person, I'd make a snarky comment along the lines of "apparently the iPhone 4S disappointed him to death" - luckily I'm a better person than that. RIP
Wow, a 7 digit ID - let that be a lesson in the perils of procrastination.
He truly made the world a better place.
but like most of the folks posting tonight, I mourn his passing. I'll remember the good things he fostered in Apple products throughout the years and the true creative drive he shared with the world. I'm not huge on Apple products themselves, but the impact he had on computers, phones, IT, and geekdom in general has been profound and cannot be dismissed. RIP, Steve.
That after a disappointing iPhone 4S release many people didn't believe in Apple.
"I do believe in Apple, I do believe in Apple, I do believe in Apple"
My internetting is no good.
html5 was better for corporate aims of apple. being obliged to pay license to flash is much worse for them. and even if we accept it as something altruistic and open minded, its still no good while people are being put into walled gardens.
and no, YOU people are tiresome.
Read radical news here
Yo can be a troll AND be correct. they are not mutual exclusive. Troll is also the "-1 Being an ass" moderation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Flash on the iphone?
Ok, was uncalled for, but someone had to say it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Not an apple fan, but Steve Jobs was, is and will be an icon in the techworld. A great businessman and probably a great father, husband. Can we now please put all the money we spend on wars into something useful? Like finding a cure for cancer....
Is this a + or - 1 to the Jobless rate?
'I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out.. I feel something terrible has happened.'
It is really weird (for someone I really don't even know), but the news of his death hit me pretty hard. I think part of it was that he really wasn't very old, in fact he is wasn't much much older than one of my brothers.
A reminder that all of us have a finite amount of time here and we really should try and make the best of it.
RIP Steve.
It was mine, sorry, I didn't notice I wasn't logged in. I was irritated then, and still am.
But is it an Apple Extended Keyboard - those things rocked.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Probably the only company to fly a pirate flag.
Probably the only company to dedicate their home page to eulogize someone (not Steve Jobs himself).
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_Honors_Rosa_Parks_on_Home_Page/
RIP Steve Jobs. You were a hero, an artist, innovator, and visionary of the likes we will not know. More people, businesses, and campuses should fly pirate flags.
Steve Jobs has gone to the iCloud
To all newcomers - people here are very close-minded and can't handle complaints about Linux. Keep this in mind.
My first computer was a Mac. A tiny l'il Macintosh SE with something like 4MB of RAM. I made my first (attempts) at creating computer art on it. I can't even remember what program I used. Photoshop 1? Can't recall.
In time, each of us will pass beyond the great veil, one by one. Cherish this life of yours, and make the most of it.
Hmm. This seems to be hitting me harder than it should...
I don't think that having recently died should preclude criticism of what a person did while alive
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In the past jobs seemed to be a bit of a design nut.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002414.htm
Apple everyone knows their employment depends on living up to Jobs's high standards. According to one story, possibly apocryphal, Jobs once demanded that a designer of a new Mac not allow a single visible screw. When the designer built a prototype that had one screw, tucked out of sight under a handle, Jobs fired him.
Also he seemed a bit of a thin nut as well with the mini, imacs and laptops.
Will there be any change in being more open for enterprise use?
Not saying that you need to go all the way with os x on any hardware.
But have
Boxed software or some kind of easy way to work the app store.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=133132&highlight=education+end
I'm fine downloading software, but the issue isn't the download it's the fact that a purchase has to be tied to an iTunes account. If the APP has DRM then you need to also be logged in with that account. This causes serious issues in an Enterprise, much like the iPad does. The institution wants to always retain it's own purchases forever and so we end up managing hundreds of email aliases we use to generate iTunes accounts. It wouldn't be so bad, but there is also no model like the Volume Purchasing Program for the App Store for the Mac App Store and so tax exempt schools get taxed on purchases and then have to go through a process to get their tax back.
It's a boat load of overhead in a managed environment to say the least. Cart before the horse in regards to the Mac App Store. But I get it...Enterprise is the second class citizen to the bread and butter personal consumers.
ernstcs is offline Report Post Reply With Quote
Laptops with battery you can change like just about ALL OTHER laptops.
some kind of hardware / software road map.
Mate displays
imacs with easy to get to HDD's other AIO don't make you use suction cups to take the screen off just to change a HDD.
specs bumbs or lower pricing on systems like the mac pro that stays the same for 6mo-1year + at times.
a bigger mac mini that has more for better cooling, desktop cpus (lower cost and more power then the laptop cpus in the mini), room for desktop HDD's, quad core + low to mid rage video chips.
A mac mini tower or lower price mac pro will also be good for enterprise use the mini is ok but same specs with more room for cooling may be needed.
sort of.
You didn't have to call it that way. Here was my version, I think with a bit more compassion:
I admit, I thought he'd last a quarter longer. But, neither then or now was/is the time for vitriol. I'll save the Jobs-had-Michael-Jackson-killed stuff for later. ;)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For sure, he was one of the prioneer in computers. We will miss you for sure. RIP
As much as I hate Apple, I will always remember Steve for creating the NeXT computer system which first introduced me to Unix on a state of the art system back in high school. R.I.P.
Nevermore.
That's only your opinion, and I don't agree with it. I believe that trolling is supposed to be reserved for people saying things exclusively to piss other people off and/or divert the discussion into a pointless, heated tanget; "being an ass" is not an acceptable reason to mod something troll. Something can be vitriolic, wrong, provocative, or just downright crazy without being trolling. The fact that slashdot has forgotten that explains a lot about the groupthink mentality that pervades this place sometimes.
...between the deaths of Diana and Steve, expressed in a notation equally meaningful to American and European conspiracy imagineers.
When someone dies? It would probably help you score a few points in a psychopathy test!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Well, I'd disagree that Apple is following all of those, not to mention that those speak to only aesthetic design... not functional, which I consider by far more important. Still, it hardly matters, because even if those rules are the only thing that is important and Apple follows them to a T... Steve Jobs didn't cause that. The designers and engineers that he oversaw caused that. To whatever extent Apple has made excellent products, those products are the achievements of the people who created them, and not Steve Jobs.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
As a customer or stockholder wouldn't you be angry if the driving force behind your favorite company, one who had serious health concerns, ducked out of his job while giving literally not one word of concrete explanation? For many people that kind of job change was bigger than if President Obama suddenly said "Biden's in charge now, peace out!", and yet Apple and Jobs thought nothing of refusing to explain anything about it. It was ridiculous and insulting, and to me just another example of their controlling corporate culture saying "We know what you need and when you need it, now shut up and wait for us to tell you when we're damn well good and ready!".
I'm not even going to make any lame jokes.
Abe Vigoda is still alive...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's true that history remembers those who use technology to accomplish things, and not those who created the technology. I would not agree with history that this is the important thing, however. I value the people who created the thing far more than the people who saw how to make others want it.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
My very first computer was a apple IIe and it opened my world to computing like never before. That was my last apple computer, but I do have a ipod touch and felt the same way about it when I got it 3 years ago as I did about my IIe. Thanks for the excitement and amazement of using break through devices over the year.
RIP Steve Jobs. Though your business model wasn't always like, you brought cool stuff in to my formative year.
An amazing technologist, RIP Steve!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
good bye Steve, you will be missed.
While I was never a huge Apple fan (well, I do own an iPhone, but I never owned any Mac), I do admire the work Steve did, and I guess it would be a slight understatement to say that Apple products had quite some influence on how we use our computers today.
My condolences go out to his family. Cancer is a horrible disease, I lost my father last month to it, so I can guess how hard the last few weeks must have been for all of them.
I would definitely not agree that their products are long-lasting, when iPhones are essentially intended to be thrown out once the new model comes out. I would also not agree that they are environmentally friendly. Wrapped in environmentally friendly marketing, perhaps...
There's gonna be a lot less passionate debates around here...
R.I.P., Steve.
I know how you feel, when the 1st Iraq war broke out, I was on school holidays, at home watching "Good Times", cut it off half way through. Never saw the end of that episode.... :-(
It's true that history remembers those who use technology to accomplish things, and not those who created the technology. I would not agree with history that this is the important thing, however. I value the people who created the thing far more than the people who saw how to make others want it.
Please don't misunderstand me, I do value PARC's contribution to our present GUI environment. I decry Xerox's lack of vision. They had the world beater in the early 80's and they let it slip away.
all we are now is hedge fund managers and checkout clerks.
no more steve jobs.
no more big ideas.
What is there to say that hasn't already been said. Whether you liked his products or not, you have to admit that they wiere a driving force in the industry. When he resigned as CEO we knew this day couldn't be far away. Rest in peace, Steve.
apple is dead. steve jobs is dead. the personal computer is dead. 1984 is coming back.
all we have left now is linux.
Thanks for all the cool stuff. You were a visionary and inspiration. The world is lesser without you.
steve wozniak: "hey check out this l33t floppy drive controller i made! sweet eh?"
steve jobs: "we can sell this"
ordinary people: "i did this on my mac. no, i didnt need an $8,000 workstation"
school children: "fd 40; rt 80; fd 40; lt 80;"
What can I say?
Most of the visionaries - and I mean, the REAL visionaries, do not stay with us for a long, long time.
Those stick with us for ages, like Bill Gates, just ain't cut from the same cloth like Mr. Jobs.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
being obliged to pay license to flash is much worse for them.
This comment makes no sense. Why would Apple have paid a license for Flash on iOS?
carry the casket from the stage, a figure pops out.
"And one more thing..."
...for your legacy and influence will live on forever. RIP Steve.
Fake Steve Jobs also died?
Mod me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
They've got a lovely burial plot picked out for Steve Jobs, it's a walled garden at a premium price that only the groundskeeper is allowed to enter. You may only leave specific kinds of flowers that you purchase from the groundskeeper, and upkeep only continues until the first rain, heatwave, or below-freezing day, then he has to be reburied in a marginally nicer walled garden at a steeper price.
I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work. Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely." I'm glad the last sentence sounded sincere. It started off so politically correct and yawn-inducing. Screw your wife, talk about how you feel. And he does at the end. It's good to see.
Been a fanboi since the 128k Mac. Met him once when he was at NeXT in the early days and we were peddling Modula-3, didn't close the deal. Don't recall if he was wearing a black turtleneck, but he was wearing jeans, I am sure of that.
This leaves such a hole.
Steve Jobs was an technology icon who raised the bar for what a person should expect from their computer, phone, music player, etc... This is not just in regard to the inside the case technology, but also the user interface, and the industrial design.
I extend my deepest sympathies to his family.
And to the various trolls posting here, there will be a later time to vent. Now is a time to speak kindly, or do not speak at all.
Reminds me of another bright star that burnt out recently:
http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/
Condolences to Jobs' family, and to all of those that will miss him.
since the beginning of time. Aristotle talked about monopolies in The Politics
Steve Jobs didn't invent monopoly or branding or lock-in or planned obsolescence. That is how modern corporations work, every modern corporation. Most business people, though, do not understand that those things are simply means to an end, they are a way to support the important stuff... like font systems and tablets and smartphones and laser printers for everybody.... and the real important stuff.... the people who use these things.
Why on earth would Apple pay Adobe a licensing fee for a browser plugin? Where else does that happen? How is adopting HTML 5 over Flash pushing people into "walled gardens?"
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Interesting: Steven Paul Jobs.
Quote: "I have 3 kids (Lisa is not my daughter, enough of those rumors)."
Wikipedia: Steve Jobs.
Quote: "The couple have three children. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan.[43] She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.[43]"
Wikipedia's reference 43 is page 2 of Fortune Magazine's March 5, 2008 article, The trouble with Steve Jobs.
Quote: "When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa's mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn't be Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child." He later acknowledged paternity of Lisa, married Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA, and fathered three more children. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 29, graduated from Harvard and is a writer."
From page 1 of that article: 'Pondering this issue, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't." "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry'
Another quote from page 1: "... his deployment of stock options at Apple and Pixar, which exposed both companies to backdating scandals."
From page 2: 'Jobs' break-the-rules attitude extends to refusing to put a license plate on his Mercedes. "It's a little game I play," he explained to Fortune in 2001.'
'One former board member described Anderson's role as "tantrum controller." '
'The company discovered "irregularities" with 6,428 grants between 1997 and 2001 - roughly one in six that Apple issued during that period. (New disclosure requirements after that time caused backdating to dry up.) The company also found no instances of backdating before Jobs took over as CEO. Apple was forced to restate its earnings, taking a pretax charge for unreported compensation expenses of $105 million.'
"Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006, also investigated and found a backdating problem there during Jobs' time as CEO."
Page 3: "Anderson, in an extraordinary public statement he issued after settling his case with the SEC, disputed Apple's exoneration of Jobs. Through his lawyer, he said he alerted Jobs to the accounting implications even as the CEO was in the process of picking a retroactive date for the grant to his top lieutenants. He also said Jobs assured him that the award had been properly approved by Apple's board."
Page 4: "It was a great speech, simple and moving - though it clearly left the false impression that Jobs had learned of his illness in mid-2004 and immediately proceeded to surgery, when in fact he had learned of it in October 2003."
I've studied the issues for many years, and have formed the theory that Job's abusiveness is possibly the cause of his illness.
At times like this it is best to remember the good contributions from a man who provided so much to our industry. Thank you Steve wherever you are now
I would say helped create our industry. Both Jobs and Gates were instrumental in showing the world what was possible with computing. I sincerely doubt there would even be an Internet without them. Geeks would not be the new coolness, or at least in such demand, and I truly have no idea what computing would be like.
I have been with computing from the start of it and can honestly say that despite all the faults of both Microsoft and Apple, the entire industry was spawned by those two men and the groups of people they led.
Everybody else was just a 3rd party vendor.
Seriously... try to imagine an alternate reality where neither Apple or Microsoft existed. Who was going to create our industry the way that it is?
IBM? I sincerely doubt it. They would have never believed in personal computing, or that there could even be personal computing. Computers would still be AS400 mainframes to this day most likely.
RIP Steve. I might not own any Apple products, but the paths he blazed have definitely impacted how I use my computer.
(And, yes, the geek in me noticed the "42" reference.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
In other news, in a spectacular ceremony at the Vatican, the Pope granted immediate sainthood to Ballmer, Gates, Ellison and Fiorina...
But thanks for the iphone and R.I.P. Steve.
They're not fond of rules
Apart from:
- you must use itunes to sync your ipod and iphone ...etc.
- you must register and activate your hardware via our central database
- you must use apps approved by Apple
- you must use proprietary cable formats we approve
- you may not run whatever software you want on your own device
- you may not replace your own battery
- you may not make products vaguely similar to our products
- you may not purchase media which does not have localised price-gouging
Seriously, this is sad, but the guy was primarily part of a private company which exists to make money for its shareholders. He didn't cure disease or invent the internal combustion engine or walk on the moon. He took good ideas (generally thought up by other people) and refined them to maximise their commercial capabilities.
So sad: yes. Was Jobs a significant figure in his field?: yes. Is it over the top to act like Einstein or Leonardo Da Vinci or JFK just died?: yes.
Read Pynchon.
"All technology is built off the shoulders of giants. Innovation is usually a process of small steps on uncharted terrain, and very seldom giant leaps over mountains."
It would nice if Apple acknowledged the shoulders it has stood on.
e.g. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 by Diamond multimedia was the first commercially successful portable mp3 player, release in 98. In contrast, the iPod was released three years later in 2001.
The designers of the RIO got no credit for being innovative, but they did get recognition from the RIAA, who sued them.
The ipod three years later got all sorts of awards for being an innovative _product_, however the most innovative thing about it was the fact they managed to do a deal with the RIAA and sell music online.
Another example would be Mac OSX being based on BSD.
I agree with you he was a visionary, he influenced the world in ways nobody else had (or is likely too), but while praising him for what he was. We shouldnâ(TM)t give him credit for what others did.
You know that there is going to be someplace where people vigil tonight and start leaving some kind of token. I wonder what it will be a "mountain of" by the end of the week outside Apple HQ?
Thanks for making an impact Steve. I only wish you had taken the Gates path and brought some of your vision and tenacity to philanthropy. Imagine what the rivalry on that front could have wrought.
Empathy to all of his loved ones, Blood & Otherwise...
I imagined Jobs post-retirement full of behind the scenes manipulations, a book deal, maybe even a Nicholsonesque "indiscretion" or two, and what does the universe give me? /sigh
God bless you Mr. Jobs, and thanks for all you gave in the time you were here.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
A true titan. One of us. You did well Steve. Rest easy.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
Your time came too soon.
SYS 64738
Because he packaged said technology in a way that people wanted to buy it (first microdrive mp3 player with fast i/o), or helped to move the industry (USB-only iMac*). There's a word for this.....innovation.
* Yes, USB, deal with it. Manufacturers in the cutthroat peripherals industry were slow to move to the new standard when "everyone" already had serial or parallel ports on their PC's - why add an extra cost to your device when nobody needs it? That changed when Apple created a captive Mac market with a connector that would also be compatible with PC's made in the last couple of years.
** No, seriously, deal with it. Sure, some USB devices were available at the time. But that doesn't mean that they had taken over the market, anymore than USB 2.0 has been replaced by USB 3.0, just because it's "available".
This.
I'm not exactly an Apple fan but you can't deny he has had a huge impact on the tech world over his lifetime, and played a major part in driving the masses to portable technology. It's sad to see him go.
> let us remember all the Chinese workers who commited suicide
Let us remember that the suicide rate of the 1 million+ workers at Foxconn is less than a third of Chinese as a whole.
Reducing suicide rate by two-thirds is a pretty decent accomplishment.
From the windowing systems we use on modern computers to the fonts we take for granted seeing on our screens, Steve Jobs may not have been the first inventor of these things, but he saw their potential and used his influence to bring them to the mainstream. His iPod changed he way I listen to music, and made listening to audiobooks a practical and easy thing; imagine scrolling through a 22 hour single audio file without something like a click wheel. Before the iPod, audiobooks were simply impractical, usually spanning dozens of CD's. Or the interface on other mp3 players was only practical while listening to 5 minute files. Now I can carry around a library of 10 to 15 books, along with podcasts of my favorite radio shows.
Again, I am not sure that Steve Jobs actually "invented" these things. Instead, I suspect that Steve's role was to say to his team "design me a good interface for a music player", and then to look at their ideas, and discard those he thought didn't live up to his ideals. He knew what he wanted, and knew how to say no. He was a leader, and he lead entire sectors into the modern age; the computer industry, the computer animation industry, and the music industry, all dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming into the form that we see them in today.
RIP Steve Jobs. You died far too young. You are an example to us all.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers.
I think you're not giving Woz enough credit.
This is a man, whether you liked him or not or approved of everything he did or not, who was in fact instrumental in a number of steps in the post-1960s computer revolution.
Although Jobs had his part, it was Woz that designed the first two generations of apple computers himself.
I'm not trying to make light of this death, but the engineers behind all the devices are still alive.
So? He was an engineer. And he did a damn awesome job of it, too. Without Woz, early PCs might have taken longer to bring to market; they would have had more chips and would have cost more because of it. It probably would have taken an army of engineers to build what Woz did.
But the world has armies and armies of engineers.
On the other hand Steve Jobs, more than anyone, realized that computers could be made into consumer appliances that every housewife, artist, author, schoolchild and, yes, hipster would want to own. The design and marketing of computers and smartphones to ordinary people, not just businesspeople or techies.
Woz without Jobs would have been happy to stay in his garage and solder. Linus Torvalds would probably still have been inspired to create an open-source OS for geeks to play with and build upon. Bill Gates would have gone ahead and put business machines on the desks of every cubicle drone in the corporate world. But without Steve Jobs, personal computers would never have become personal.
Much of Slashdot hates him for this, of course. They hate the lack of choice, the warm and fuzzy design, the drool-proof UI and the high prices. But what they really hate is that he took this wonderful world of powerful technology, a world where they are kings, and turned the keys over to the unwashed masses of housewives, schoolkids, artists, and, yes, hipsters.
I don't really understand how the Slashdot tag system works. How many people need to uniquely name a tag before it goes up on the article's page?
...until I touch the Apple IIe, at age 16, back in my home country of Chile. I never looked back. I became a Software Engineer and I now live in Silicon Valley doing what I love to do.
What Steve did thorough all these years have so many touch points in my life. Virtually every device that Steve envisioned and Apple created have changed the way I interact with technology, and more importantly, with people.And I'm talking about NeXT, the Apple Newton and all the rest. Few human beings can have such an influence on so many other people's lives all over the world.
I see Steve as the role model for all of us Gen X and Y. Focus, passion, determination, cutting red tape, taking risks, create, hire the best, innovate. Above all, give it all to the game, acknowledge your life is not forever, lay out your plan and vision for the future, and leave when you are confident you did your part, at the very end.
That's how life is to be lived for people like us. Thank you.
RIP Steve Jobs. Insanely great. Indeed.
I reflect your pompous signature back upon you.
But he reaps a ton of credit for technology he didn't create. Some of it is technology even Apple didn't create.
And? Neither MS nor Apple "invented" the GUI, either, but nobody else was able to get it onto the desktops. I suspect that a lot of inventions don't succeed in their original forms.
Some think of things, some create things, and some gett things to a point where they can succeed. Jobs was very good at that.
His true genius and achievements were marketing, not tech.
That's probably a good thing, or there'd be a lot of Apple tech that nobody uses because it was created without a vision for those who might use it.
damn.
back to reality.
Real sad.
This is a great idea. But how would we get Microsoft or the like to do this? Google, maybe.
And I've had more than 1 story submission posted as well!!!
The answer to all your problems
That's a fair point - but he did bring them together, and oversaw their output, and the result has unarguably been an astonishing success.
You forgot Luxor Jnr, Knick Knack, For the Birds, bounding, etc...
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Apple is the only company that survived the MS pc consolidation years. They lost the PC battle, but they were the only ones to really survive. CPM, TI, Atari, Commodore all failed.
With OSX apple took UNIX and made it a mainstream OS. Showed how to make it easier for consumers which is finally happening to linux. Even MS started to invest in there OS too. Competition helps us consumers.
I started with the Mac Clones, which Steve killed. I got a form letter from apple, I was mad, but got over it.
I have to admit really like the Apple Products. The less is more and focus on user experience really appeals to me.
He fought till the last moment and left as a winner. He took a zombie company and shot it to the stars making it #1 and set a direction for computing. Some of the practices were questionable but still, he influenced and pushed significant development on an area created by him. His dedication and determination is a big inspiration for me, not only about the products made under his direction but mostly about the conditions he was under ,from his early steps till the last day, which were not enough to drag him down. He is a man who worked hard for what he accomplished. I indefinitely respect that as a hard-working person myself. He left his (overall positive) mark on the world (looks like a valid meaning of life for me).
P.S. Not an Apple fanboy and I do not own any device from that company. On the contrary, I am opposed to the (over)pricing and development policies that are pushed. However my first interaction with computers was from a cousin's macintosh. I was so little that I can barely remember it. He was one of those involved on that machine's creation. Thank you Steve.
Google actually DOES show a "Steve Jobs, 1955-2011" message now.
Seriously... try to imagine an alternate reality where neither Apple or Microsoft existed. Who was going to create our industry the way that it is?
IBM? I sincerely doubt it. They would have never believed in personal computing, or that there could even be personal computing. Computers would still be AS400 mainframes to this day most likely.
Well, for a start, there were microcomputers before and alongside the Apple II; the entire S-100 ecosystem, for a start.
But the big deal in the 1970s was time-sharing: small companies and individuals would rent access to applications run on big centralised machines in data centers through terminal devices which were hard-coded to be mostly 'dumb' interfaces, with command sets for reading and drawing and a little local storage, but most of the processing would be in the mainframe.
Fast-forward through the micro revolution of the late-70s-80s and the Web/Net buildout of the 1990s, and suddenly here we are in 2011. And what are the hottest new trends? Web 2.0 online apps, Cloud computing, iDevices with cut-down OSes optimised for being dumb terminals to the Cloud, and centralised oligopoly providers of rentable computing: Amazon, Google and Facebook. It's shinier, and we've got more brute processing power in our pockets, but at the App Store layer the model is converging back to the Bell/IBM vision of the future. HTML is becoming an updated VT-100 protocol, and the anarchic "everyone is a peer server" net of the 1990s seems an anomalous blip.
Steve Jobs led the personal computing revolution, but he also led the counter-revolution. He made personal computing devices desirable and ubiquitous luxury commodities; he didn't necessarily aim to make the production of computing content, rather than its consumption, open and democratic.
Is the consumerisation of a revolution a good thing or a bad thing? Well, that may depend on your political standpoint. But it's a thing.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Always wanted to meet him. I loved his drive and his ideas about what would make computers easier for people to use and integrate into their lives.
Sad new about Jobs. But I sure as hell didn't need ABC to break into the middle of the Double Jeopardy round and give me a fucking seven-minute retrospective of his career, hailing him as the god of all modern technology.
ABC is owned by Disney, who's largest single owner of stock was... Steve Jobs. Not that I agree with their decision, but maybe the folks there felt a bit more strongly about Jobs' passing a bit more than the people at NBC / CBS.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I'll bet his last words were.. "...and one more thing."
and Microsoft at least mentions it on the homepage (under "news") and has a statement by Steve Ballmer.
Angry? No. People quit for personal reasons all the time. If someone no longer feels, for whatever reason, that they can give the necessary attention to a company then surely resigning is the right thing to do. I don't see how a precise explanation of the reason for a resignation helps anybody.
If the resignation related to the company itself (ie an irreconcilable difference of opinion among management about the companies direction) then sure, that would be relevant. If it's purely for personal reasons then I don't see how anybody else benefits from disclosure, Steve Jobs and his family are entitled to be as private as they wish with personal details.
What I do find astonishing is your sense of entitlement.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
You got a great thing going.
Don't blow it.
Thanks for all the heart felt sympathies.
Sent from my iPhone 5
What did one cancer cell say to the other? "Lets get Jobs"
just turned on the telly for some background noise as i do the nightly chores and whatnot, saw this newscast talks about apple, etc. (did they announce something else today? is it "one more thing" taken up to the next level?) then noticed the "steve jobs / 1955 - 2011" in the background.
O_O
ran upstairs to the box that is turned on... crap, it's true!
whoa, was tmz right after all?
too bad sjobs died so early, most of personal computing is in a critical phase right now, apple still needs his touch at this time... very well managed, yes, but that "vision" thing, i'm not so sure...
Looks like google put a link up already. Way to go google.
I think you're not giving Jobs enough credit even for the first wave of personal computers.
Not to say Jobs doesn't deserve every ounce of credit he gets for what he accomplished in the last decade. Mainstreamed personal media players, dragged the music industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century with his online music store (and now with the cloud service that's set to go live in a week), mainstreamed smartphones, conjured a market for tablets out of thin air. Dude has absolutely accomplished way more in ten years than many of us will in six or seven lifetimes.
But for the first wave of personal computers? All Apple ever made in that era were computers that cost a shitload of money and did fuck-all. Especially the Lisa.
As much as I credit the TI 99/4a with being my first personal computer, the Apple II was my first introduction to them. The computer lab at the middle school I went to once a week for my "gifted" class (CATS, or PATS, I don't recall the exact acronym) when I was still in elementary school was just a classroom with a dozen of them, not even networked (not sure networks even existed at that point, at least outside of labs).
Yeah, I'm old. Whatever.
I'm not an Apple fanboi; far from it. I'm a Microsoft-certified, Android-phone using, Linux-loving geek, and I have won many debates over Apple products vs others. I hated the walled garden concept as much as anyone else.
That being said, this is still a sad day for the industry... and you're just an AC being a jackass.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
future patent/royalty problems ?
Read radical news here
No matter your technology religion Steve Jobs had an impact - a huge impact. The word iPod is a part of our lexicon. The iPhone has spawned the whole sector called smart phones, The iPad is doing the same. And as another poster noted he took UNIX to the mainstream with OS X. That may have been one of his most gutsy moves. The man had vision. The first computer I ever touched - ever used was an Apple II in college in 1981. Can't believe he is dead at 56 --- hell I'm only 55.
RIP Steve Jobs
Its not the years, its the mileage
He had pancreatic cancer, a disease that makes AIDS look like the freaking common cold. It's an amazing testament to medicine that he lived as long as he did; most people don't last a year after diagnosis.
Technically, since he lived more than five years, he counts as a cancer "survivor."
Not many people know that Steve Jobs owned Pixar. He funded the company for 10 years after George Lucas had backed out. Being a 3d artist, I feel like I owe my entire career to his foresight.
RIP. QEPD.
look at what you replied to. do you see ANYthing regarding 'now' ? it talks about THEN.
Read radical news here
unfortunately, due to what he did, this is the direction the movers and shakers of the information technology are taking.
talk about the openness, freedom of apple at the starting stages, and talk about after jobs. i wonder if the other steve can turn things around and make apple more in line with the spirit of information technology freedom and progress again ...
And they say that Mac users are elitist.
There comes a time in the life of every technology when it ceases to be an obscure domain of experts toiling in the background and becomes a simple and disposable fact of everyday life.
Written words.
Electricity.
Medicine and sanitation.
Automobiles.
Steve Jobs has done this to information technology.
The tehno-elitists hate this, because they have lost their "freedom." They have lost their control over the technology. They can't design it, can't program it, can't upgrade it, can't show people how to use it, can't tell people what they should do with it, can't make it theirs.
What geeks have lost, the ordinary folks of the world have gained. Today, any clueless idiot can walk into a wireless store, plop down $100 for a generic smartphone, and walk out with access to all the world's information in a form he can understand and digest. The device itself may be closed, proprietary, locked-down, but the device doesn't matter. Who cares about the technology? Its irrelevant. It's disposable. It's just a goddamn plastic box with a screen.
And yes, that's Steve Jobs' victory. Every simple, cheap, commoditized, plastic-cased, point-and-tap information appliance is a symbol of Steve Jobs' vision and achievement.
Moderators aren't mind readers, they can only judge you on the words you write. Perhaps the fact what you wrote (then and now) is indistinguishable from a troll could give you pause for thought. Perhaps it isn't Slashdot, perhaps it's you.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Its not like he's gone forever. He's just gone to the genius desk in the sky. Now, all of us shall hold up an iCandle app on our iPhone, bow our heads and make the sign of the Sad Mac! Hail Steve of the Turtleneck! For he shall reboot!
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Most times it seemed as if people either loved or hated him nothing in between, whatever you thought he was without a doubt a marketing genius and did what he did very well.
That's the exact opposite of innovation. Innovation is creating something new, not repackaging existing ideas.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Sure - I'm not saying the man was a nobody, that's obviously untrue. I just feel that he should be given credit for what he actually did (sell the shit out of products), rather than what others did (create said products).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Apple's old keyboards were great. Then came the iMac... cute as it was, the keyboard and mouse were absolute crap. Then again, the whole industry is like that nowadays, if you want a good old mechanical keyboard you have to buy one separately.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Sorry, but even back in the 80s, we still thought of AIIs as overpriced crap schools paid for, but we got the elite cool hacker machines called C-64!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc7yUo9jqYY
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
other than google, who does it all the time.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Why is everyone praising him? Steve Jobs was not a nice guy. Most of us call him a lucky parasite with teeth. He was not an engineer. Steve believed in Karma, and this time it caught up to him.
Common, just like now, apple's releases took months to get to countries outside USA.
VIC20 Release date 1980 (VIC-1001) / 1981
What about the Commodore PET , it was released in 1977. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
From the NYTimes article:
Copying S. J. to the bitter end... how appropriate.
Let's make this a record level of comments for a Slashdot story.
Goodbye, Steve. It was with a Mac that I came to love computers.
We live in a world of mediocrity. We get by on billions of mediocre people churning out mediocre work.
Even really great people, really brilliant people, churn out mediocre work from time to time. I know I have churned out more than my share of mediocre work.
At the same time, most of us actually have the discriminating ability to look at a piece of work and say, "that is really mediocre." Probably 10 or 20 times a day, I come accross some piece of work - mine or others' - that is mediocre. It's clear that the person who made it was in a rush or didn't care or simply wasn't smart or talented enough to deliver something truly great.
Though we may be able to spot mediocre work, most of us just are not in a position of credibility to do anything about it.
Steve Jobs saw mediocrity the way we do, the difference is he had earned his credibility and could send things back to the drawing board any time he wanted. How did he earn his credibility? He was smart, hard-working, and happened to partner with a rare person who consistenlty churned out great work: Steve Wozniak. Those early ingredients set Jobs down a path where he could tell someone what they were making was not good and that they could do better and those people listened to him and ofen were inspired by that "encouragement."
I believe that was one of Steve's many great gifts.
> Reducing suicide rate by two-thirds is a pretty decent accomplishment.
The rate is reduced with suicide nets, while getting poisoned with n-hexane at work, working at $1.18/hour (which is the highest pay bracket). These people are still attempting suicides. Care to read more?
Say what you will, but Steve always seemed to know what was coming up next. Inventor or not, that is a skill few posses. RIP Steven.
"I feel somewhat like I did when John Lennon was murdered. Great sadness, and the sensation that part of your life is no longer there."
-- "Dan" from Binghamton, NY, comments section of the New York Times
I wish the man a peaceful rest, but let us not speak falsely. Apple, under Jobs, has not contributed to culture so much as they have shackled it.
Culture is not a product.
Culture is what is shared by society. Culture is our values and our knowledge.
Apple created phones that forbid the distribution of Free Software, and that prohibited users from installing software of their own choosing. Users who wanted Freedom had to "jailbreak" their phone. Apple resists using open standards in their software, and have contributed back to the community far less than they have taken, despite profiting tremendously from the work of volunteers. They have worked toward distribution channels that funnel a portion of all purchases to the corporation.
Apple is a profoundly anti-social organization that sells very pretty baubles that lock culture away to wither and die. They do not contribute to culture.
Though I can't stand Apple and its customers, I have to acknowledge that I would not be in the industry I'm in today if it weren't for the Apple ][. A son of lower income parents, I was given the opportunity via a elementary school program to have an Apple ][ to use and explore over a couple of weeks. Today I'm considered a guru by those around me, though I know exactly how little I really know.
Thanks for that Steve.
And to my mom and dad, who sacrificed quite a bit to get me my first computer, thanks as well.
Anything is possible given time and money.
He kept a few on their toes, and inspired others to follow their dreams. You have to admire a man that was a part of so many lives. RIP Steve.
Oh no. Somebody speaks truth at the wrong time.
No, that's you confusing innovation with another i word, invention.
Case in point: Apple did not invent the micro-hard drive or MP3 players. But they innovated by being the first one to use such a drive as the basis for an MP3 player, when everyone else was making tiny capacity flash-based players or pocket-unfriendly players based on laptop or desktop hard drives.
I, for one, will put a rose on his diPod. Steve was core.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Not much nonsense in this man. He found work he loved and lived it. Supreme innovator, market disruptor. CEO of the century already. And always, with class and style. He will be sorely missed.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Steve was a man that was unafraid of big ideas, could see outside of the box in a way that few are able, and was capable of changing the world, and he did...
He was instrumental in redefining the stigma related to technology, and raised the bar for his competitors and contemporaries.
While he polarised the 'community', and ruffled more than a few feathers, he dragged many industries, sometimes "kicking and screaming", into a new future; we are all better off for his contribution.
The seeds that he planted will grow for years to come; the legacy of Steve Jobs will live on.
I will remember Steve as the man that made technology ubiquitous and am sorry that he was not given that chance to watch his creations flourish.
Like the Joker "needs" Batman; the I.T. world needed Steve Jobs, we are all diminished without his presence...
I hope he enjoyed his work--he didn't have much of a retirement.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Slashdot wasn't about the breaking news even back then. The Slashdot effect was mostly about underpowered servers, bandwidth limitations and slow http daemons running even slower html generator scripts. Slashdot was and is mostly about the flame wars in comments.
America .. always less jobs
Rest in Peace, Steve. You were a visionary and a true inspiration to many of us. You accomplished more in life than most of us could do in 10. Your legacy and story will live forever. For me, there's no greater honor than that.
Thank you for everything.
iDevices with cut-down OSes optimised for being dumb terminals to the Cloud, and centralised oligopoly providers of rentable computing: Amazon, Google and Facebook.
iDevices are anything but dumb terminals. Google is the one that's trying to move everything into the cloud, Apple's the opposite putting devices in your pocket that sync from the cloud to your devices (the cloud as syncing mechanism) with a strong focus on local applications.
he didn't necessarily aim to make the production of computing content, rather than its consumption, open and democratic.
Is that why every mac ships with a free development environment, a music creation application and a video editing application ? Oh and iMovie and Garageband are also available on iOS.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I generally don't like Apples, but for Steve I'm having a bowlful.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Remember all the visionary engineers, software authors, designers, etc who put all those years into creating stuff that steve either asked for, or discovered and went crazy for. If apple continues to treat them like precious gold (overworked gold), then apple can still be loved without steve at the helm.
You hear about the person who didn't rely on anecdotal evidence to support his belief system?
>While I'm not a fan of Apple's business practices, Steve made a lot of advances in technology. Like what exactly? What advances in technology did Steve Jobs make? I'd really like to know. What did he actually invent instead of borrow or steal?
RIP Steve Jobs. The world is a far richer place having had you here. Difference made.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
iTouched...
Surely by now there is an app for that ?
Buy seriously. I am sad to see him go. Whether you liked him or not, no one can deny that he changed the world as we knew it.
da da da dum indeed.
I'll always remember a young Steve Jobs who told the story of how he contacted the founder of HP on the phone when he was a young boy and asked him for spare parts--the dawn of the computer age in silicon valley when things were a bit different. At one point things weren't so commercial, although business has always been there spurring progress; the founders did what they did for reasons other than money--no matter what anyone says. Steve Jobs was one of those founders. With his death we see the last of the founders of that wondrous age fading away, the pioneers are no more. Though it now seems the industry is now mired in intellectual turmoil reflecting our overall decline of values in the country which spawned the once great silicon valley--we still have hope. I remember as a young man working on Apple computers, on Commodores, on Tandy's, on whatever I could get my hands on. I was heartbroken when Windows took hold, so much so that I quit for a while--years. I loved the craft so much that I couldn't stand to see it all consumerized. Often I would sit and read old Byte magazines and OS manuals longing to control, and hack. I taught myself to program on TRS-80s, and old hand-me-down 286s coding into the wee hours of the morning and trouncing any BBS I could find. From the beginning I would release my programs for free--giving back to the community helping to replenish that which I had consumed from others. I hope that everyone can someday experience what I have, they joy of a technological renaissance. As you can probably tell by now, I'm not an iPhone lover, mush less an owner, but now when I remember Steve, I remember those times.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
If Bill Gates did a fist pump today.
What an asshole. No wonder no one wanted to talk to him.
How DARE you besmirch the memory of such a powerful deity, so meaningful to millions (perhaps BILLIONS) of faithful worshipers.
Your unkind comments have certainly unleashed the Brahman, and you will pay dearly for it.
Expect to die a slow and painful death in a most embarrassing fashion, and in all probability be reincarnated as a common house fly in a spotless bathroom devoid of even a speck of fecal matter or dried skin detritus.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Goodbye Steve. Gone to join the great iCloud in the sky. (I know, mixing Beatles and Pink Floyd references but these seem apt given the recent iTunes releases).
SteveJobs.ico in color available in iHeaven in the iCloud (the one above), on the new iPhone heavenly network... With iHalo (not the one you play, the one you wear on your head), with iWings (not the ones you eat, the one you fly with)
definitely not jailbreaking out of this one :)
I did not agree with all he did but definitely deserves respect, RIP indeed
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
So long and thanks for all the Apples. RiP
Steve Jobs is pretty much solely responsible for Pixar. He was the first real investor, before Steve came along Pixar was just a bunch of very talented but under appreciated animators at Lucasfilm with a huge dream but no money. He bought what was later to be known as Pixar for $10 million dollars in 1986, and bankrolled it until their first big budget movie Toy Story.
He also made smartphones what they are today. Before the 2007 iPhone very few smartphones used a finger-sensitive (capacitive) touchscreen. Now it's very difficult to find a phone that doesn't use a capacitive touchscreen. This allowed removing buttons so the entire face of the device can now act as a screen which improved usability immensely.
Few other people could claim to have such a huge impact on modern society as Steve Jobs.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I came to Macintosh post-Steve in 1990, though my Mac Plus still had his signature inside, I only knew him as the founder that had left. Mine was a world of Scully and Spindler and Amelio. I became a Mac tech support professional during this period, and it has remained my career to this day. When Steve came back in 1997, it was a pivotal time early in that career. My second employer had decided to abandon Macs, but wanted me to stay on as a PC tech, and Apple wasn't doing so hot.. I was intrigued though by the plans to use NeXTstep as the basis of the next Mac OS, so I actually bought a used NeXT Color Turbo Slab with the 21" NeXT Color Monitor and NeXTstep 3.3. The first time I turned on that 5 year old machine, it felt like I had jumped 10 years into the future. I knew then, I would remain a Mac tech. I left that job for one supporting Macs again and never looked back. Over the remaining years, I read everything I could find about Steve and came to appreciate his unique genius. Thank you Steve for making my career and passion possible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
I know how you feel, when the 1st Iraq war broke out, I was on school holidays, at home watching "Good Times", cut it off half way through. Never saw the end of that episode.... :-(
But we've had a decade of good times in Iraq! It came back on after a break. We *will* see the end of the episode... one day.
Hey I just realized that kids are right now growing up believing "We've always been at war with mid-Eastasia."
Here is a clip of Steve Jobs in 1997 looking forward into the future where we have cloud computing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or7zaUaP-J8&feature=related
That should shut up everyone who claim that Steve Jobs was not a visionary and was just a good salesman.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Today we lost a multi-billionaire. He did not concern himself with the well being of his fellow man. He was a sworn "non-philanthropist". There was no concern for affordability of the products he created, nor did he worry about the lives of those who manufactured his products. Several of those employees took their lives because of the schedule he demanded. He was cruel and heartless to most of those around him, often berating them for not understanding what he wanted. However, he kept his focus on technology and design. His vision took lowly objects that though useful, were flawed, and pushed his company to produce the best possible version of that object. These objects are beautifully designed and supremely functional, surpassing the work of almost any other company. He demanded products that were interelated, ensuring that when we used one product, we were not only tied to that specific platform, but also that only other products made by his company would work well with it. For the loss of a life, and the loss of this determination we mourn today.
All of that said, Steve Jobs had amazing vision and without that vision, we would not have the amazing technology interface we have today. The world of technology has suffered a great loss this day.
throw the baby out. The bathwater is cold
When will the grey memorial edition devices be available in the store? Will they have extra RAM?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
He was not "found dead." All the news say he died surrounded by family.
Please, Slashdot - hire some editors.
Advice: on VPS providers
By increasing the price of Apple products.
Disgusted with some people here dancing on the coffin.
WTF is wrong with you? "Walled garden" my ass. It was his garden. Don't like it — buy something else, he never forced anyone to buy Apple products. The guy was a visionary. If it wasn't for him, the tech industry would be where it was 10 years ago, if that. Had Apple not released iPhone, your Android would look like ass today, which is what it looked like shortly before iPhone was released. That's assuming there'd even _be_ Android. Your PC laptops would be 1.5 inches thick and would have a battery life of 1 hour. Had NeXT not existed, Tim Berners Lee might not have invented the web. Had Steve not taken those typography classes way back when, chances are we'd have shitty monospaced fonts everywhere. Linux would be a lot more CDE like, and Windows would not look the same either, assuming there'd even be Windows. There would be no Toy Story, no Cars, no Up, no Finding Nemo, all computers would be made of shitty beige plastic, USB, CD/DVDs and WiFi would be set back years, there'd be no Chrome, no usable Clang and LLVM, no mainstream UNIX OSs, no DRM-free downloadable music, no ideas for other people to rip off.
Steve's reach extended far beyond Apple and iPhone. The guy simply gave a lot to this world, while not really taking much for himself. He has put a dent in the universe. You may glorify him or vilify him, but you can't ignore him. And if you're a decent human being, you can't cheer his death either.
Duchamp took a urinal and stuck it in a gallery wall, stating "this is art".
Jobs took a powerful yet arid piece of digital machinery, eliminated the aridness (command line interface), and as the object grew more powerful, turned it smaller and sleeker, time and time again.
All in all, a brilliant, earnest response to Duchamp's rhetorical provocation.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
"Life is too short and then you die... So it'd better be damn good" -Steve Jobs.
Yours was perfect. RIP Steve.
For what it is worth I personally DID have an Apple //e. I tricked it out too: Cider II 10M HD, High speed CPU upgrade (the Apple //e's original clock was 1.6mhz IIRC, the card that I had had high speed RAM and a 3.6 mhz 6502c), big RAM 80col card (the Apple //e's normal screen was 40 column wide, a normal upgrade was to get a card that let you run your word processor/spreadsheet apps wider), a number of modems from my original Hayes Micromodem 300 to my Hayes 1200. I could go on but I think you all get the idea.
I learned to program 6502, good ol' Applesoft BASIC, and even fun stuff like Pascal and Forth. I learned how to manage space on what was at the time a hard drive that not a lot of people had. I learned a bit about networking from running a BBS. I also met a lot of people who also used the computers of the time like the C64, the Atari's of the day (the ST line was really a nice computer) and even those early PC guys. And then while I stepped away from computers for a few years when I came back and turned into the modern PC guy I am today I think a lot about how my early days with my Apple, and TI99 4a, shaped what I know about computers.
I remember reading about Waz and how he had basically designed the computers and how when I would run into something frustrating in having to do with programming the machine that it was likely because Waz had to take a few shortcuts to make the thing, which owning a computer like that was still silly expensive at the time, was because he had to keep costs down.
And then I remember reading about the guy Jobs who helped Waz make Apple into an actual business. And I was like oh, ok cool. I'm glad Waz has someone like Jobs to help him out. Little did we know at the time that Jobs was more than just some accountant (which is what I view mostly as the people with titles like CEO, glorified accountants) and could build stuff too.
Being a computer guy I of course have been working with Apple stuff for a while now; even before the iPods. And so even with the modern rise of Apple into what most people know about it now my personal history has me with a lot more to say about it than just the iStuff that they do now. And with all that I wish Steve well into that good night. We will not see the likes of him yet again for some time.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I'm a nerd. Not a geek. What the heck do I know of popular culture? Furthermore, using words like all or every is certain to bring about people that point out your error. Don't tell me how to think, there is nothing wrong with the way I think. I'll miss him far less than Gary Gygax, Benjamin Franklin, etc, etc, etc. Frankly I don't care. People die life goes on, Apple is a cult culture and has little to do with most of the nerds here imho.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Goodbye Steve... and thanks for all the wonderful product you help to create. And also thank you to bring back the Pixar studios. Without you now we couldn't have any of their beautiful films. A true visionary. RIP.
We are in a new era. Largely ushered in by Mr. Jobs' company. No it's not the internet, no it's definitely not music, video, apps, games. You're probably thinking mobile devices and your wrong. It's communication. Apple has redefined how we humans communicate to each other, to ourselves and to our computers. Are you ready for Siri?
A Turtleneck too far?
Steve Jobs isn't terribly unique.
Like hell.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Right on. Unix is the core of every Mac and iPhone and iPad today.
Without Unix, Apple will have devices that crash and burn all the time just like the old Mac pre-OS9.
I pretty much feel the same way as you.
Less than 0.000001% of them has an actual unique idea to make a penny but a large and jaded majority of them profess to know Mr. Steven P. Job's worth to Computing. In ten years those same programmers will not be remembered. Centuries later, History students will learn about Mr. Steven P. Jobs.
To a personal hero and the greatest boss I ever knew and worked for, R.I.P. The world would be truly dull if it were not for your Vision.
RIP
-- Mean People Suck
Some of your decisions we loved. Some of your decisions we hated. Some of your visions didn't pan out, others changed the world. Regardless of our personal beliefs, few can disagree that you had a profound effect on the technological world.
I only wish you had more time to spend with your friends and family. Our hearts go out to them in their time of loss. And our minds will continue to build upon the foundation you helped lay.
RIP
Absolutely not. There are things beyond business and money and whether Steve Jobs is sick or not is not my business as an investor in Apple. I knew the unknowns when I signed up to be an investor.
Everything can be looked upon as relevant to my investment, but some things ought to be off limits. Illness is sacrosanct. Family is sacrosanct. Whether Jobs wanted to disclose either of those things to me was his decision, and one that I trusted him to make when I voted for the board that kept him as CEO.
[ : ) ] --- One more smiley Mac for the Road
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I think we all as computer geeks, and various other geeks can all relate to the products and innovation that he helped (either personally or via collective of RnD) put a spin on for the general public. I wish I could have had the pleasure of meeting him one day. He will be extremely missed. It is because of Apple that I even learned to pursue computers to being with. It all started with a Macintosh at a school and ended up spending a life time learning.
To his family, friends, and the rest of the tech community I am sorry for our loss but I am glad for the accomplishments that were forever changed many of our lives.
RIP Mr. Jobs.
Rounded corners. And white plastic.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"or helped to move the industry (USB-only iMac*)."
Part of the way Apple helped move everybody to USB was by participating in the development of IEEE 1394 (codename "firewire").
After the standard was finalized apple revealed their trademark on the term and demanded a $1 royalties everytime the word was mentioned.
It seems God has no more ideas to fix this world so he decided to take Jobs with him to take advantage of his creative mind.
and thanks, But I liked the Newton!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
In about 1985, at TI somebody brought in one of the first Macs and we got to play with it. It was different from everything on the market, not counting the old Xerox Star which was probably not still around at that point. The Mac was the first computer that was actually a personal computer and not a minimalist mainframe. Circumstances left me on the PC side of things, but it was clear they were following what was going on over there. There was more to it than that, but - good job, Steve. I wish you'd had 30 more years.
"Now he belongs to the ages"
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
I have to comment that I don't like the title, nor the story text. The title reads like a cheap CNN headline, and the story like some murder victim. With all the beauty of the English language at his finger tips, the OP decided to make it sound like a cheap US news bite. Other sites, thankfully, have been more kind.
All respect and best wishes to the family of Mr. Jobs.
It is very sad for the people he left behind that Steve passed away, but look at it from his point of view. No more pain, no more anxiety of 'how long do I still have, will I be able to finish this before I die' etc, no more hospital visits... I think being dead must be a blessing for him.
-- Cheers!
Steve Jobs dead
Pancreatic Cancer just as stubborn
As he was
Like many here, I grew up using Apple's/Jobs' innovations and growing inspired to make a difference through my skills with technology. Even if you are not a Apple user today (like me), for the early Apple ][ and Mac GUI innovations, we owe him much.
100 years from now, the time we are living now will be remembered for it's thriving creativity and the computer/semiconductor industry grew up and that innovation possible. And, Steve Jobs one of the key visionaries driving technology forward. Rest in Peace.
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
Steve Jobs, a very sad day. It will be interesting to see if Apple's great success and innovation continues now that he's really gone. Written on my MBP
The reason you should be modded down, and not up, is that it is not appropriate to bring it up on the day the man dies.
Neither you or I have a great appreciation for how Apple does things, but make no mistake about it.... that man was partly responsible along with some other great men in ushering in a new age of technology.
All great men stand on the shoulders of other great men, and through the ability to benefit on their achievements make their own.
You sit here on Slashdot today, on a computer, with the Internet, and talk badly about the man on the day he dies without even realizing (or at least acknowledging) that the very same man contributed to your ability to do so in the first place.
Give respect where respect is due. You have 30+ years in computing... you should know better.
You must have known him personally to know you didn't like him. I assume you can, at the very least, divorce your judgement of a person's personal well being from his/her professional affairs.
I've heard the rumors about how he was, as a person. But you should never judge a person by what others say of him or her (good and bad).
"Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues, too. Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." - Emerson
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Jobs had just pointed out prior art, without getting sued.
He was indeed a man of many a coat.
RIP
The one chance I'll have to say, so I'll say this:
Thanks for bringing UNIX 'back'.
I hope you taught the company you left everything you knew. I also hope they were listening, this time ;)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
He did invest in and took the risk to bring in quite some nice innovations to the common people of the world.
Please feel free to mod me down.
Your implication here, a wrong one, is that anyone who mods you down is doing so out of emotional or irrational reasons.
But the reality is, your view on this matter is much narrower than you believe it is, and you have a distorted view of Apple's history and product philosophy, which merits, objectively, why your post should be modded down.
I can find no information in that article or other reference on the web that indicates he was found dead in his house in the morning. Have some respect, and don't spread falsities. It would be prudent to wait some time before releasing the circumstances surrounding his death, and I believe his family is doing that. On another note, I really hope there is a Michael Jackson style funeral, with swarms of people and disruption.
Capitalism has won when an impoverished, debt-ridden mass of Western consumers mourns the death of a billionnaire who made his fortune by the sweat of dirt-cheap workers provided by a Communist dictatorship. /sarcasm
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Sun once did well, and then it didn't. Apple once did well and then it didn't... and people waited and then it did well again. What it will be in the future is anyone's guess.
Success is fleeting, you can be the greatest bokser and still be remembered by most as a dimwitted black guy. You can play the most beloved Sci-Fi character that a LOT of female geeks dreamed about and still be remembered as a fat balding man. You can make PC's more affordable then they ever were before and still be remembered as the guy that makes expensive PC's people can't afford.
Mind you, I wouldn't put Torvalds in that list. Gates and Jobs are business men. They went for the big bucks. In doing so, they changed society and some of it was decent but a lot of it wasn't. They are not heroes, they are icons. Heroes sacrifice for the greater good, are noble, achieve for the sake of it, not the money of it.
Jobs only sold PC's that were cheaper then what had been available before but more expensive then what came later. He provided a useful torn in MS side to at least slightly hobble MS complete and total dominance of computing but he did it for no other reason then a big payout. And when Apple gained more dominance we saw exactly what MS total control had saved us from far worse. Can you imagine what PC computing would have been like without Gates and just Jobs? Forget Linux, forget dual-booting, forget GPL. One OS to serve them all and in darkness bind them. The lord of iOS.
The man is now dead and the world has lost little, greater people die every day with barely a pause in anyone's mind. A smart businessmen is gone but there will be others. Maybe his replacement won't feel that he needs to get 30% of every transaction.
It is harsh but ultimately Jobs did more good for the world by failing and barely hanging on then by succeeding. It was good WinTel defeated Apple but that Apple was always there as an alternative to keep that evil alliance in check.
But if Jobs had been a true success and he would have filled Bill Gates shoes, the world of computing would off far far worse.
His true epitaph: ruthless megalomaniac businessman whose greatest contribution is that he kept another ruthless megalomaniac from achieving total power. Yes, you read it here first! Jobs is Darth Vader. The emo dark look says it all.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've never owned an Apple product and chances are I never will, but I can't deny the changes Jobs and Apple brought to many people's lives. Apple and the consumer technology industry will sorely miss him for his insights and leadership.
That roughly says it all. That urinal is considered to be worth a couple of million. Nobody has payed it but it gotta be worth it right? Because it is ART! And nobody can quite figure out why nobody else is pointing out the emperor is not wearing any clothes.
You are aware it was not Steve Jobs who invented the gui or window interface or the mouse? He sold it.
It is like attributing that urinal and attributing it to the gallery owner who sold it (or rather tried to sell it since it wasn't sold). What next, attributing the plane to Boeing because they sell them?
There are inventors and innovators and there are business men who sell the resulting products. Don't confuse the two or you will end up being a MBA trying to sell something that doesn't exist.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Work is the best antidote to sorrow" suggested Sherlock Holmes to a shocked Watson upon his reappearance in London in the story "The Adventure of the Empty House". This morning I feel creative and it's time to make something insanely great. How about you?
A relatively short life, in modern terms, but one full of activity. Rest in peace, Steve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbcVbcBobs&hd=1 Ballmer's next.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I'm a bit sad that it's reported he was found dead in his home. Dying alone, even with a terminal illness, sounds... lonely.
I thank you Steve. R.I.P.
Most new windows software will still work even in win2000, and WinXP, its not hard to write software that disables new os features if the lib versions are too old.
But only macs make new software LOCKED to the new OS, and not run on the older 1 gen OS on purpose by business decisions, not technical ones.
OS & APPS should be very very separate, and very little of the higher layers should depend on very recent versions of middle/lower layers.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I wonder if he donated say, 2-3 billion dollars to a cancer institute 4 years ago, would they have saved his life, or at least make him half MAN, half iAndroid.
There have been many breakthrus in science. Or was he very 'let fate take its course' guy.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Invention: creating the hard drive
Innovation: coming up with a way to build smaller hard drives
Repackaging: combining those smaller hard drives with existing chips bought from someone else and a contracted-out software package to create a better MP3 player.
The NeXT computer wasn't just the first web server, it was the first web browser too! WorldWideWeb was a NeXT application, and Tim Berners-Lee credited the ease of development on NeXT machines for making it possible. It also had the first graphical UI builder[1], and possibly the first web applications framework (there's some debate over whether WebObjects was the first, but it was within a month or so of being the first if it wasn't).
[1] And still about the only one to get it right. Interface Builder on NeXT (and later OS X and GNUstep) let you create objects and connect them together, not just draw interfaces. In a document-driven application, for example, you'd put all of your views and controllers and a stub model in a single IB file and then just instantiate it in a single line of code to create a new document.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I spent my childhood admiring Steve, and actually had him and Woz as something of an idol. He has died far too young, but left a legacy that many can only dream of. Rest in peace.
My UID is prime. Is yours?
Goodbye Steve, and thanks. I'm gonna go pick up a NeXTcube in your memory.
I highly doubt it. Where there's money to be made businesses are likely to innovate. The fact that the other players at the time did not "see the future" does not mean that this future would not have come about (perhaps in a different form). Bringing computing to the masses seems like an overwhelmingly obvious step to take...eventually. I don't think we'd all still be living in the tech stone age without the likes of Gates/Woz/Jobs. But I could be wrong.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. -- Willam Blake
Nothing on Netcraft...
P.S. How do you dress for mourning when all your clothes are black anyway?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wouldn't say that Xerox were idiots. The licensing fees from the laser printer patents alone completely covered the cost of operating PARC. They also got a big chunk of Apple shares (not sure when - or if - they sold them) in exchange for the guided tour of the centre. I don't know how much they made from Ethernet, but I wouldn't be surprised if that added up to a lot as well...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
THIS.
1. By putting himself on ALL the lists, he gained an advantage over others.
2. There were almost certainly people below him whose lives could have been extended by many more years by that liver.
Most people would do the same, but it's still wrong. It's like shoving someone out of the way to get on the remaining lifeboat. Except that in the analogy, your odds of living given the boat are much less than theirs -- and you know this.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Using the old Stephen King troll? There are times when repeating tired old memes are inappropriate, however ironic and clever you think you're being.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Which wasn't really a problem. Sony just called it i.Link. Other people just called it IEEE1394.
USB 1 and FireWire weren't anything like competitors though. USB was very cheap to put in devices, while FireWire devices needed a full host chip. USB only ran at 11Mb/s (less before 1.1), while FireWire ran at 400Mb/s. FireWire supported isochronous transfer, USB didn't. FireWire placed very little load on the CPU, USB was a CPU hog at high transfer rates. The iMac had both: USB for things like mice, keyboards, MIDI devices, and so on, FireWire for external disks and video cameras.
The thing that spurred the PC industry to adopt USB but not FireWire was Intel putting USB controllers in their south bridge chips. If you used an Intel chipset, you got USB for the cost of connecting the pins to a port. If you wanted FireWire, you needed an extra chip. This made motherboards with FireWire significantly more expensive. For years, PCs were crippled if you wanted an external hard disk. You were limited to 11Mb/s via USB as the fastest external connector on most, while the few that supported FireWire found the bottleneck in the drive, not the interconnect.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Wow. Where did you go to school? The cheapest computers NeXT ever sold were around $5,000, well out of the budget of most high schools. It was hard enough for the company to sell them to universities...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
At NeXT, he was the one who brought object oriented programming and rapid application development into the mainstream. Both were ideas that were on his must-have feature list from the day he founded the company. Saying that he wasn't a technologist is just woefully ignorant.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hopefully I already have a Newton, price is gonna increase, now !
I would say helped create our industry. Both Jobs and Gates were instrumental in showing the world what was possible with computing. I sincerely doubt there would even be an Internet without them.
Jobs and Gates did a lot, but let's not go overboard.
The ARPANET went online in 1969, many years before Jobs and Gates had an impact on computing, and Vint Cerf had written the TCP spec by 1974. Intercontinental Internet traffic from Stanford to London started in 1975.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
He'll *will* be missed - just not by you. And probably no one will care about that.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
He was instrumental in the Apple II, and that was, no matter what anybody may say, a titanic shift in the manufacture, marketing and public perception of the computer.
I think you're overstating the impact of the Apple II, especially outside of the USA. The titanic shift was more the work of Mostek and Zilog who powered that first generation of computers. But really, it was poised to happen at that point in time.
Apple/Steve has never been especially revolutionary. What they have been exceptionally good at is entering an immature market and producing a really coherent, polished product.
I'm not trying to deride him: clearly that is a very difficult skill that few others, if any, have managed to master.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I would say helped create our industry. Both Jobs and Gates were instrumental in showing the world what was possible with computing. I sincerely doubt there would even be an Internet without them
They were influential, but let's not go overboard--the ARPANET went live in 1969, and by 1975 Vint Cerf had spec'd TCP and there was intercontinental Internet connectivity from Stanford to London.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
I agree that we shouldn't criticize the man today - mostly out of respect for the people who loved him, since he isn't affected now - but how exactly is Jobs responsible for us using computers connected to the Internet?
Dilbert RSS feed
I think parent should shut up today, but regardless of Jobs, what a person does - including professionally - can and should be included when one judges another. How can it not? A (wo)man is defined by his actions.
Simply today is not the day to judge him.
Dilbert RSS feed
You made a difference...
Do you find what you like to do? He find and had done it.That's him.
If at the moment of Steve passing on, every generation of iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have started playing Stairway to Heaven followed by the ghostly voice of Steve saying 'Thank you'....
Because other handset makers do? The desktop versions of Flash are free, but the mobile versions are not. Handset and tablet makers all pay Adobe for the player. Apple refused, probably because the Mac version sucks and they didn't trust Adobe not to make a crap version for the iPhone - Flash on my TouchPad performs about as well as on my Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro - much better when playing video.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The C64 was the most successful "personal computer" ever built, and more or less created the whole concept of "home computer".
Plus it trained an entire generation of future hackers - the guys who went on to build the modern Internet ecosystem.
And don't get me started on the influence of the Amiga, because I'll be a while stopping.
Atari was nowhere near as influential in the personal computer space as C=. Not by a country mile. (Games are another story)
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Thanks, I just lost The Game.
When one brings it up has no bearing - it's opinion, it's truth, it should be said. There is no such thing as a bad time to have an opinion. There's no reason to be nice to someone just because he's recently dead.
Being nice just for the sake of propriety is a terrible drain on society. Be real, always.
As for me, and to stay on topic, I never much liked Jobs or any of his company's products in the last 15 years. I have a great deal of admiration for him, however, for the things he figured out and for having the drive to make what he wanted happen. When combined with a limited ability to have his way and a team of strongly competent people amazing things frequently resulted. Apple won't be the same without him and nothing and no one else will be replace him. A unique individual, his force of personality was awesome to behold whether you agreed with anything he said or not.
He was still an asshole.
I want my Cowboyneal
Steve Jobs, at peace. :-/
iRIP, man.
AMMalena (www.Malena.net) "The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." (Kosh, B5)
You're kidding right? Why would I miss someone authoritarian why employees, with no worries to humans being (at least not the Chinese people from Foxconn), that denied people the right to use devices that belongs to them as they with (You can't install an application unless Apple approves it, you can't use it as a mass storage device, you can't manage your playlist without crappy iThunes, etc.)? But maybe I'm not part of "the Slasdot community".
At least he got to say goodbye to his family.
Steve Jobs, RIP
Eternal Flame
While I'm not a fan of Apple's business practices, Steve made a lot of advances in technology. RIP.
You mean advances in design.. the technology innovations weren't his, he just took them to the next level of usability. Something which I aspire to somewhat in my own line of work. So I didn't appreciate a lot of the things Apple did and don't own the toys (because that's what they are), but I don't deny what they did to the field of personal computing.
RIP Jobs.. enter greedy corporate bastards carving Apple's carcass into their own personal empires.
He was a lot like Elvis in that regard.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I just heard Bill Gates tried to kill himself but botched it and is recovering in a Seattle hospital.
...you and The Woz created the Apple IIgs, and changed my life forever.
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I will always remember Steve for creating the NeXT computer system which first introduced me to Unix on a state of the art system back in high school.
Ditto that. When I was in high school (which had the Mac Plus in my drafting and architecture class), I was an intern at a civil engineering company, at which we had a NeXTstation Turbo. I'm not sure which changed my life more— the internship itself, or my time at that NeXT keyboard.
These days, my own NeXT Cube sits on a shelf in my home office above an original Macintosh.
the nurses were just holding him the wrong way!
Why would I miss anyone I've never met? Why would I care if he's died?
Steve, you've been a true inspiration.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
They do?
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/05/adobe-seeks-to-extend-reach-of-flash-nukes-licensing-fees.ars
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Like so many others have commented here, regardless of what you think about Apple and Steve himself, he was a visionary and was instrumental in propelling the computer industry forward to the point it's at now...
The cake is a lie.
neither mussolini was the inventor of dictatorship. however what he did has popularized and mainstreamed something that should have been left in the past.
exactly like what steve jobs and apple did.
Read radical news here
I attended the World Wide Developers' conference when the Mac II was introduced. Rumors insisted it was to be the first color Macintosh. When the exhibit hall doors opened, there was a Mac II with its big (for the time) monitor, but the image was the original Mac's crisp black and white. It was only when I got closer that I noticed the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen--it alone displayed in bright rainbow color. That was Job's showmanship.
You had better think about the consequences. If you clone a whole army of Jobs, not only will this plunge the world into a period of blackest night from which no soul will ever escape, but it will also mean that all the handicapped of the world won't have anywhere to park.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Learning the news as I did this morning, I was in tears. I am not a fan of Apple (although I own an iPhone). But Steve Jobs has done in one lifetime, what many, many people put together could not do in many lifetimes. Any one of his achievements would qualify as genius. He has reinvented the term genius. Steve Jobs: May he rest in peace. My thoughts are with his family and with the Apple employees.
Indian Rediff
All views my own. Anyone else with the same views needs to have his/her head examined.
He just left to develop Apple's iCloud division!
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
RIP
Sorry, but just because he was the first to make these developments does not mean no one else would have in his absence... I mean come on, you REALLY think we wouldn't have monospaced fonts? You don't think that some other designer or even another typography student couldn't muster up the vision of applying it to the computer world? Give me a break. I'm all for Apple products and certainly believe he was an extremely important figure in the computing world (rivaled by very few), but no way is he the only person in the last 20+ years capable of envisioning everything you've just mentioned. He just happened to do it first.
Steve Jobs has been uploaded to the iCloud... He will be missed!
There's a book, titled Divide or Conqueror, by Diana McLain Smith, in which Smith discusses the disagreements between Steve Jobs and John Sculley, back in the 1980's, at Apple. Judging by the discussion Smith presents, in that book, I suppose it could be said that the disagreement was over whether or not Jobs would be allowed to lead. The proof would appear to be in the proverbial pudding, as to that.
Leadership is a tricky thing to do (quite generally speaking, at that). My opinion is that Steve Jobs had not only the vision and the motivation, but also some terrifically useful ideas with regards to the domain of expertise of the business he lead - namely the Apple company, and by indirection, some broader part of the tech industry, as well.
To voice a more acrimonious opinion: IMO, Jobs teh shytte, and Bill Gates is teh poz3r. Well, people make myths and heroes however we will, anyway. Cheers, and a virtiaul +5 on your comment
I have to say I'm shocked at some posts but rather than point any fingers, I just want to say whatever anyone thinks of someone while they are living, after they die, we should all give them the respect. RIP Steve, you will be missed, by the technology world, even if there are those that don't realize it yet.. you were one of the many great innovators of today.
Steve, we will miss you, you have made being a "geek" a cool thing.
The most important CEO - RIP.
There's a man who made some difference in the industry, he will be missed as a professional and be much more missed in his family. R.I.P Steve Jobs !
but i expect that you've inspired enough people to think differently, that you'll at least live on thru the memories and actions of an entire generation.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
The man understood design, and he had that elusive "vision thing". He had a clear view of what he wanted his technology to be and stuck with it.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Ah, he's a kindred spirit of yours then.
RIP Steve. You will be missed.
personal well being
I hear you. But damning a man is magnitudes away from damning a life.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
The force is even stronger with 'im nows ><
RIP, Steve Jobs - so long, and thanks for all the considerate design
From the subtitle on this page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is/
"Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation, OS X is engineered to take full advantage of the technologies in every new Mac. And to deliver the most intuitive and integrated computer experience."
They've made no secret of the fact that they have a BSD core - and in fact spend a great deal of time contributing back to it and the open source community. Not just through "legal obligation" by the licences involved, but with new projects and so on. They do far more than they are "obliged" to by licences like the GPL.
As far as the deal with the RIAA - that was nothing to do with the iPod. The iPod was a product in itself that existed long before iTunes was selling music on the net (that didn't happen until at least 2 years later). The RIAA deal is irrelevant. While the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player, it was the first one to really shake up the UI and physical design. I knew someone who had a Rio and it was poorly made with a cumbersome UI. The iPod came along and changed the game. It wasn't first, but it was what people wanted.
Apple don't claim to invent things like the iPod and iPad and so on, but they do claim that they've created something *right* (whether you believe them is entirely subjective), and in many cases that is exactly what they do.
I'm not going to give Jobs credit for "inventing the mp3 player", that misses the point entirely. I will give him (and the team around him who he managed) the credit for making the mp3 player great.
By "very accurate" you mean "biased and deliberately flamebait" right?
The are certainly criticisms to be made of Jobs and Apple, but the GP'd post was nothing but trolling.
NeXT, for one. Founded it, helped to shape it into what it became (including the first web server and web browser; cheers Tim Berners Lee), and took it with him when Apple bought it.
He was responsible for driving the early creation of the Apple II along with Woz - two essential sides of a coin - one could not have succeeded in quite the way they did without the other.
He was extremely good at what he did, and had an eye for helping to shape technology to take it beyond the realm of geeks and tech-minded people. You may not think that's a worthy skill, but it is a large part of why Apple is so successful.
Alas the passing of Mr Jobs
Gone to the Walled garden
From where there is no jailbreak
Flash ah ahhhhh
That wasn't one of yours..
E J Thribb 44 11/12
I went to high school at a small Class B high school in North Dakota. But, many of the small Class B schools in our region got NeXT computer systems granted to them some how (didn't really know where the money came from and didn't really care at the time, lol). I was just reading about NeXT in a Popular Science magazine and then a couple weeks later I walked into our schools library and seen one sitting in a little alcove in the back. I almost had to pinch myself because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And, this wasn't just one of the little Monochrome Slabs either. This was a full on NeXT Cube with a 21" color (tube) monitor and laser printer. I had never seen anything so big on a computer. Most other computers were 486's with 14" tubes running Windows 3.1 at the time. Thus began my path of becoming a UNIX and then Linux geek.
Nevermore.
You are talking nonsense.
A licence fee for Flash?
You are just desperately looking for a way to paint any of Apple's decisions as Machiavellian. It's just not possible for you to see any of Apple's choices as pro-consumer, is it?
You are unaware, then, of the IBM 5100 - introduced in 1975.
IBM was coming around to desktop computing, but was hampered by a strong corporate culture of eating their own dogfood - they rolled their own processors and circuit packages. That little 5100 was a sweet machine for its time, but terribly pricy.
Don Estridge convinced IBM to use off-the-shelf components in the mad drive to get the 5150 (IBM PC) out the door in Boca Raton, which made them competitive.
Without Steve the future of consumer technologies may be delayed. No matter if you use Windows o Android, everyone uses a technology based on Steve's Company: Apple. Thats why Steve was important.
RIP Steve, and many thanks for all your good work!
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Wow, that's probably close to $15K of hardware. I am insanely jealous. Those machines are still pretty expensive - they go for more than PowerPC Macs second hand - although that's probably more due to rarity than utility. I wish Apple would release the i486 version of OPENSTEP as a free download, like they did with MacOS 7.5 for people to run in emulators. NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP is incredibly impressive when you consider that the machines it ran on were an order of magnitude slower than a first generation iPhone.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
4 Insightful? Come on! No offense, but personal computing was going to happen, Jobs or Gates or not.
Sure, Jobs has made a difference by insisting on design all along (like it or not), and usability. No argument there.
AS400 happened in 1988 according to Wikipedia. My father had a Samsung IBM clone (Intel 8088 processor) with MSDOS before that. According to Wikipedia, the original IBM PC was introduced 1981. I don't think you have your facts straight.
We've all lost our Jobs.
Hole in Infinity's Loop;
The seed at the Apple's core.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
Dumbing down is the process that allows mass appeal and take-up. If you had it your way I guess you would still be using the command line. The internet would be the stuff of fantasy. Slashdot would be on a BBS.
I'm no Apple zealot but I can see that Apple products kicked the competition up the ass and forced the competition to, you know, *compete*.
As with Bill Gates, love him or hate him, Steve Jobs' efforts have improved the experience for users of all new tech in the last decade.
Toy story 3 did suck.
As Jobs died in America, jobs died in America.
You can't handle the truth.
I guess Fox news will report that this is the first effect of the 5% Jobs-killing, millionaire tax that was proposed.
Jobs is not wholly responsible for computers being connected to the Internet.
What I am saying is more like Henry Ford was partly responsible for the car stereo and low riders.
Jobs, along with Gates and Woz, helped bring personal computers from a strange concept (that most men at the time did not believe in) only embraced by hobbyists, to an actual "thing".
Without such large numbers of people having a personal computer the Internet never would have made it outside of Universities in the first place and most likely we would still have modems and phone lines for small groups of people that need to connect up to private networks and maybe there would be something like the Internet for a few of us, but nothing like we have today.
They were major players who lead groups of people to develop and push the technology we have today. Jobs did not do it all by himself, but he was a leader of many that helped make it possible.
http://gawker.com/5042795/bloomberg-runs-steve-jobs-obituary
if we keep losing all the good Jobs.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I say Internet (capitalized), I am referring to it an its entirety as it exists now. I am fully aware of what it is, its actual origins, etc.
It is a lot more than just some TCP specs. All of the websites, businesses, technologies, communications, and how integrated it has become in our lives would not be possible if everyday people were not shown a compelling reason to participate.
What allowed everyday people to make a decision to get an Internet account in the first place?
Personal Computers.
Who was part of a group of companies and people that made Personal Computers a reality?
Steve Jobs.
I am not going overboard at all. Without Apple and Microsoft playing their parts I am not sure if personal computing would have become as big as it did, as fast as it did. That was their vision they were trying to make a reality.
I honestly don't see any other company having that kind of vision back then, which is essential to creating the environment that made all of this possible.
People don't give enough credit to the cancer. I honestly believe jobs was only able to do the impressive work he did because he knew he was dying. Had it not been for that drive, apple would be nearly as popular as it is today. During his 8 year swan song, he managed to lead apple's skyrocket from garbage to the #1 valued company in the world. At the time of his death, it was #1. Not just the #1 tech company, but the highest valued of all companies in the whole world, period. That's an accomplishment I think anyone would be proud departing this life after. Even if the cancer was a slow and painful killer... what a way to go out with a bang. He wasn't just an american icon, he became a global icon. Despite apples numerous design and marketing accomplishments, I still think apple's fanbase was in large part a cult of personality focused on steve. With his passing, regardless of the competence of his successor, it just won't be the same. I am not an apple fan by any means. I do own an ipad2 and I recognize and may even respect steve's accomplishments. I am glad to see him go because now there is hope that the 'apple' era may finally end and we all might get to see something new and different in the industry, if any other company has the balls to step up. It does sadden me that steve's apple was the only company I could foresee bringing *wearable* computing to the mainstream. If he had lived another 10 years, it may have happened. Now it might still happen, but it will take longer and isn't nearly as likely to become 'cool'.
Atari didn't actually use the elegant solution for reducing transistors that Woz came up with. They didn't design the game.
Jobs' main contribution was brokering the deal and then ripping off Woz.
I do not say this lightly or often: I wish I had mod points
It was 1984 at Carnegie Mellon University... in this era the cutting-edge Microsoft (PC) operating system was MS-DOS 3.0.... it looked like this: http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/gfx/logo/msdos_screenshot.jpg . In this era, when using Microsoft PC's with MS-DOS it was quite common for people to lose hours of work unless they manually saved their work constantly, even if they did nothing wrong because the the computer often "froze up" with no warning. Anyway, I was trying out the Paint software on the new Mac, which looked like this: http://www.forevergeek.com/wp-content/media/2010/08/MacPaint-Japanese-Girl.png . Keep in mind that at this time there were no hard disks in PC's or Macs... just floppies. I had spent about an hour drawing a picture on the Mac but had not saved my work at all. I stretched my legs a bit under the computer table and my foot accidentally kicked the power cord out of the socket. The computer instantly died. I was bummed that I had lost my picture but I plugged the computer back in and watched it boot up again from the floppy. Did it come up with an error message "your computer was not shut down properly" (which you will see with a Microsoft Windows computer to this very day). No. Did it just boot up normally as if nothing had happened? No. Without a single message and without asking me a single question, it booted directly into the Paint software WITH MY ENTIRE PICTURE INTACT.
RIP Steve Jobs, the world will miss your vision and creativity.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Looks like he was 66 years old when he died. Please fix the headline.
Nice speculation, but since we can't visit parallel universes you have no serious evidence to support whether or not Android would have been better or not, whether or not PC's would have been better or not, and whether or not the web was invented. Give me a break. Just because Apple invented a few things first doesn't mean that it wouldn't have come out EVER. Maybe without Apple stifling innovation like they are doing in Europe things would get much better. This Apple worship is worse than fucking Scientology. Steve Jobs used his employees ideas and efforts very effectively, and probably had quite a few good ideas of his own. Thats about all you can say about him.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
My first real computer experience was on an Apple ][ at my elementary school. Granted it took many other factors over a lifetime to lead me where I am today, but I have to give props to Steve Jobs (and the Woz) for help getting it (being career, educational choices, etc.) started.
... he only wanted to test the new product.
Who's Steve Jobs?
Some guy.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
It was Steve Jobs that invented pr0n? I never knew.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If the Galaxy S2 my coworker just got is any example, Samsung execs will not only have to match his death, but die even more impressively. I'd expect group seppuku (or whatever they do in Korea).
Steve Jobs was one of my heroes. May he rest in peace.
Sounds like a typical case of shit-for-brains submitter. :-/
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
that is like saying mussolini didnt invent dictatorship. yeah he didnt. but he reinstituted and popularized something that should be left in the mists of time.
Read radical news here
Disgusted with some people here dancing on the coffin.
WTF is wrong with you? [...] And if you're a decent human being, you can't cheer his death either.
I agree with you completely there. I can't believe the immaturity of the /. commenters at times like this. Damn a man's actions, damn a man's decisions, but unless his actions or decisions threaten yours or another's life - you have no grounds to damn his life! (sed s/his/her/ )
I think Apple's definitely made serious contributions to the tech world, though I think you're over stating their (and thus Steve's) importance. They're important, yes, but it's impossible to say what we'd have without them. One thing's for sure, it's unlikely 'nerds' like myself would ever go anywhere near something as fashionable as an Apple store without a company as technologically sophisticated and fashionable as Apple. That, in itself, is one hell of an accomplishment.
Having said that, thank goodness Microsoft and the generic PC manufacturers have had mainstream competition from Apple. I guarantee yesterday's news that Mac OS has 23% of the OS market made Steve a happy man. It makes ME happy, and I'm a nobody. I love being able to install macports and actually compile htop and LyX on my imac!
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011: INSANELY GREAT ! (Nothing more need be said....)
...sales of black mock turtlenecks have fallen to an all-time low.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
This is kind of crazy. I thought that if anyone would be the first immortal cyborg, It'd be Jobs. Regardless, he really did change the world. Godspeed, Steve.
And there's a word for that: innovation.
Apple was the first manufacturer to use a micro drive in an MP3 player, and the first to use a fast interface (400 MBPS Firewire vs 11 MPBS USB 1.1, or even parallel). That's innovation. Deal with it.
Yes, absolutely.
Make no mistake about it: I don't condone Apple's business practices, past or present, but I did feel that your original post was neglecting certain truths in the business world--and, well, innovation in general.
I do think that my reply to you was unnecessarily harsh, so I apologize for that. Other than that, I do agree with the point you're making.
The biggest problem with your original post, I think, is that you could have explained the detail (here, for instance) of your rationale and you didn't. I've done that before, and have gotten slammed, and oftentimes, we're not likely to spend a great deal of time crafting a lengthy post when there's a relatively simple kernel of thought behind what we're writing. :)
The problem with Slashdot in general is that short posts can be construed as trollish and inflammatory, which provokes a defensive reaction in people even if that wasn't the intent. Judging by other replies to you, I think that's likely what may have happened. Thank you for clarifying what you meant, though. I do agree; I don't feel that Apple necessarily acknowledges those whom they've borrowed from (although, no one else in the corporate tech world does, so it's not exclusive to Apple).
He who has no
Both Jobs and Gates were instrumental in showing the world what was possible with computing. I sincerely doubt there would even be an Internet without them.
People tend to forget that there wasn't only Microsoft vs Apple at the time, but a hell of a lot better computer products. Atari and Commodore computers were cheaper, and a way better as well: better hardware, and better software too. Up to today, I never found a more convenient way to write GUI programs than at the time I was playing with the AES and the GEM. Today's toolkits like GTK or Qt are crap (and especially compared to it). Mind you, Internet started on the Unix world, not at all on Apple or PC computers.
While to some degree, I can agree that Apple played a role in making complicated things more simple and accessible for the masses, I can't agree with your above words. And really, Microsoft products were only parasites, their product never were leading and showing the way, but always following. And it is still the case.
OSX itself is open because Apple could not afford to design a completely closed system at that time, remember, when OSX launched, Apple was still hurting. OSX was make or break for the company. When Apple had the resources to create the OS they really wanted, they created iOS which is not open at all.
Spurring innovation? That generally is meant to include encouraging others. Einstein is considered so great NOT just because of his brilliant mind but because he has encouraged so many other scientists to build on his work and made science more approachable. Jobs sues anyone daring to build on his work. He spurs innovation only so far as it suits him, to gain control. MS did just the same and then stopped when it no longer made business sense. Jobs would have done the same.
Remember PsyStar? Apple sued. There is a similar story on the PC side, that company was called Compaq, they too copied someone elses machine, IBM's. They survived and Gates supported it with his DOS. It meant cheap PC's. So cheap anyone could afford them. Have you ever looked at just how much a early Apple cost vs a IBM compatible?
The history of computing is filled with a lot of lucky breaks leading to cheap ubiqutious computing. Jobs was a hurdle on that path. There were others in Apple responsible for the tech achievements. All Jobs did was sue, charge a premium for design and take the credit for other peoples work. A business man. A business man who ALWAYS tried to squeeze every last penny out of a deal. There are worse people on the planet but I won't mourn his passing. Admire the real heroes of computing who did far more and without expecting a large chunk of cash and total control in return. Even Gates is mode admirable, a louse of a business person he is at least doing something more with the money then just sitting on it.
Sorry if this upsets you but I don't need to make rich people into heroes to feel good about wanting to be rich too.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I take issue with this /. post, in fact.. not only is it TWO days late..which for such a significant event is , frankly , unforgivable, as I first became aware of Mr Job's passing on the 5th via IT world, but also, that I could find NO reference anywhere that he was , in fact "found dead" as the article referenced, but in fact was accompanied by friends and family during his passing.. (I don't know the exact quote, but it was to that effect).
I add my sympathies. There is nothing else one could say that isn't already known by the whole world...
People calm down. Jobs is still alive. Do you really think a cutting edge innovative company like Apple would fail at being able to develop an elegant solution that would prevent something as simple as death. Rest assured; he's only working on the next killer app.
From: His final will stated that he be buried in a glossy white coffin with no visible hinges or latches. ...
--
I am not a signature genius.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
Stay objective slashdot!
Classy.
I would say helped create our industry.
Yup, thanks to the personal computer most of us reading /. have a job.
Is not hard to imagine an alternate reality without personal computers, since Japan in early 90's had a very small market for personal computers but a very healthy market for big iron from Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC and foreign makers. PC's, DOS/V machines and Macs certainly were sold, but not at the same scale like they were sold in USA or western Europe. For this reason consoles like the Sega Saturn were used in some business. Still, Apple managed to have 30% of the limited japanese personal computer market with the Mac, I suppose that it was thanks to its graphics capabilities that made them a good fit for word processing in japanese.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The monk and the delicious strawberry (iMac).
The fact that all the people that worked closely with him have fond memories of him an the uppermost respect for his leadership, as documented in Folklore.org means that despite his difficult personality he earned the admiration and respect of his team; the clear difference of smartphones and tablet computers before and after the iPhone and iPad respectively makes absolutely unnecessary to visit a parallel universe except for the willfully obtuse.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The guy was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, wanted to work at HP in his summer vacation as a 13 year old kid and perfectly able to really assemble a computer from scratch, the fact that he was a impressive business man don't mean that he wasn't a true nerd too, maybe not as great like Woz, but compared to Woz, almost every other nerd looks small.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
False. You cannot say that smart phones and tablets would be different or the same since events unfolded the way they did. In fact, smart phones and tablets existed before Apple even did anything with them, and were of similar design. You know, rectangles with touch screens. Give me a god damn break. It was only a matter of time until someone made things thinner. Apple may be the first innovator, but only a fucking idiot would think that things would be that different without them.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
You know that computers need software to be useful, right? The quality of the software is of the same relevance of the quality of hardware. LG and Samsung just to name a few have had the capability to design and build stuff like the iPhone or the iPad way before Apple launched those two products. LG did the Prada before Apple sold the iPhone, and? Is not about shinny or thinner stuff, is about compelling usefulness. That's what Jobs got right since the 70's, and put in very clear terms:
"Start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it."
If it were only about technology DEC and Sun would still be around.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
OK, I have had time to ponder Steve, and I'm here only to put thoughts in writing ... I gave up my /. habit years ago, but I think this is the only place where my uber-nerd appreciation for Steve might have meaning to some. So please indulge me ...
There are lots of visionaries in the tech world. Lots of people who have amazing ideas about where technology is going, or where it needs to go. It's not hard to deny that Steve was special, but for many, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly why.
After some thought, I have concluded that Steve's vision was not amazing because of how often he was right, but because of his passion about everything that he did. While he brought great innovations to the masses, his claim to fame is that he repeatedly bet the farm on them, and busted balls to see them happen.
Off the top of my head I can think of so many big things, and so many little things, that just had him written all over. In no particular order, here is a random selection of innovations both big and small, that are clearly "Jobs" things, including stuff we may have forgotten.
- GUI computing. Its origin has been discussed to death - it was the invention of Xerox. Whether Microsoft copied Apple or Xerox is irrelevant - Steve believed it was the most important thing for Apple to move towards, to the point of getting himself fired by the very stuffy, ignorant CEO he had hired. And Microsoft's products didn't even begin to approach the intuitiveness of the Mac until long after that happened. ... the iMac was a celebration of the future of computer hardware. It eliminated all the legacy storage and connectivity, and celebrated with a bold new minimalist design. It was met with fear and disdain by the tech nerds, who always thoug
- The first iPod demonstrated that MP3 players were ready for non-nerds. It had a convenient form factor and responsive UI. Its built-in battery charged while it plugged into the computer. No weird counterintuitive software was required to copy music to it. It sounded great. It was comfortable to hold and operate with one hand. It proved to the world at large that functionally equivalent (or superior) products have no value if they are shittily designed. It also proved that Apple could make more than just computers.
- Introduced as a trademark "One More Thing" during one of his keynotes, the PowerBook G4 was probably the most drool-inducing computer ever. This thing left all competing laptops in the dust - yes its wickedly fast G4/400 processor and discrete GPU were cool by themselves, but this freak of nature brought far more to the table: it was lightweight, only 1 inch thin, all-titanium construction, widescreen (never before seen in mainstream computing), and had amazing battery life. Technology has since made that machine obsolete (big surprise), but so many of its innovations live on in the computers we use today.
(To digress just a little, the Titanium Powerbook G4 was, as far as I know, the first device to feature an auto-sensing ethernet port, so you no longer needed to worry about whether you had a crossover cable when you simply wanted to connect it to another computer. I imagine Jobs with a prototype TiBook in his office, trying to copy files from his desktop using a straight-through ethernet cable. It doesn't work, it pisses him off, so he calls up an engineer and says "fix this in by tomorrow or find another job")
- While on the topic of laptops, the first G3 iBook laptop was the first ever computer to offer wireless networking. It was one of many emerging standards that Apple embraced under Steve's command, including...
- USB on the iMac. Get rid of (almost) every other fucking connector. Jobs sees USB as the connectivity of the future, and the iMac as the future of the Mac. That powerful-enough computer did away with everything we thought we needed, including serial ports and a floppy drive. It was the first Mac in years with no SCSI. But it was more than that